Lockheed Martin and the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) have completed the digital All Up Round Preliminary Design Review of the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI).
The effort is part of the agency’s Ground-based Midcourse Defense capability to bolster homeland protection through a novel, advanced platform.
The resulting NGI system will serve as the “first line of defense” to secure the country from adversarial threats, including intercontinental ballistic missiles from rogue nations.
Digital Assessment
Under the digital design review, Lockheed and MDA confirmed the NGI program’s maturity and readiness to proceed into the detailed design phase.
The evaluation leveraged digital engineering and model-based technologies to facilitate the initial phase with a “modern and transparent” approach.
Lockheed noted that the tools used enabled affordability in the program’s development. Furthermore, the digitized methods permitted constant hardware and software trials alongside laboratory-based demonstrations.
Other works involved the assessment of the program’s workflow to sense threats and computing capability to communicate with NGI subsystems.
Delivery by 2027
After the preliminary design review, Lockheed and MDA will procure long-lead hardware to support associated NGI flight test vehicle production.
The Critical Design Review will be held in 2025 to further advance the NGI platform. Data from this phase will dictate the system’s flight test schedule.
If the timeline is correct, the US military will receive the NGI as early as 2027.
“I am proud of our team’s commitment to innovating with urgency to achieve expectations for this phase of the program,” Lockheed Martin Strategic & Missile Defense VP Sarah Hiza stated.
“With this additional confidence in our NGI design through a week-long digital review with our MDA customer, we are on track to deliver the right solution to meet the needs of the nation.”