SBIR-STTR Award

The Missile Defense Agency has developed a set of nuclear requirements to be used as design criteria for all ballistic missile defense elements. These design criteria provide three levels of increasing survivability. The current GMD GBI EKV was not designed to meet the MDA survivability criteria and no effort to determine the extent to which the current design meets MDA STD 001 has been made. Our effort is a cost effective engineering based method for assessing the impact that the MDA STD nuclear environments has on the EKV subsystems and ultimately can be used to assess the survivability probability of the EKV subsystems after exposure to the new MDA criteria. The assessment will also include definition of technology development programs needed to address EKV deficiencies. This effort is focused on the GMD GBI EKV and will be cooperatively performed in coordination with the GBI Program Office, Boeing and Raytheon

This Phase II effort is an extension of the Phase I SBIR entitled “GBI Testbed EKV Hardness Assessments and Hardness Enhancements”. Phase II will focus on evaluating specific Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) subsystem mechanical and electrical designs and piece part lists to determine the level of compliance of the current EKV design with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) High Altitude Exoatmospheric Nuclear Survivability (HAENS) Standard (STD). The results of these evaluations will form the basis for defining future block upgrades and design modifications in order to progress the EKV toward full compliance with the MDA HAENS STD. The GH Systems team, including ATK Mission Research and Raytheon as subcontractors, will perform a detailed evaluation by updating and extending the analyses and evaluations performed in Phase I to quantify the hardness, design margins and probability of survival for the EKV parts, boards, and packages, and will use the results as the basis for developing a Survivability Assessment Data Base (SADB) tool. Phase II will also include a detailed evaluation of the mitigation strategies recommended in Phase I. The SADB tool will allow the Government and the EKV team to easily track the hardness maturity during the design evolutions of the EKV.

Keywords:
Missile Defense Agency, Mda, Ground Based Interceptor, Gbi, Exoatomospheric Kill Vehicle, Ekv, Mda High Altitude Exoatmospheric Nuclear Survivability