Strategic Systems


Modernizing the Nation’s Strategic Missile Guidance Systems
Draper is applying its guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) expertise to maintain and modernize Navy and Air Force strategic missile guidance capabilities.

Technology: Developing Inertial Instrument Technology for Strategic Applications
To help the Navy’s Strategic Guidance Program achieve higher reliability and lower life-cycle maintenance costs through MK6 Life Extension (MK6LE) efforts, Draper has been developing new designs for critical sensors. The new Alternate Pendulous Integrating Gyroscopic Assembly (Alt-PIGA) and the all-solid-state Interferometric Fiber-Optic Gyroscope (IFOG) will replace older electromechanical, spinning mass devices that have many small, precision parts in a complex assembly. The new charge coupled device (CCD) to be used in the MK6LE stellar camera is a 128 x 128 array being developed in conjunction with e2v Corporation.

Draper’s Silicon Oscillating Accelerometer (SOA) design has progressed in support of the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Navy’s objective of advancing strategic-grade accelerometer technologies. A circumvention and recovery scheme that allows the OA toS recover rapidly following pulse radiation exposure has been demonstrated.

Execution: MK6LE
As the Prime Contractor for the Navy’s Trident D5 missile guidance system, Draper Laboratory oversees the MK6LE development team of more than 700 engineers from Draper and its major subcontractors as it modernizes the missile’s MK6 inertial guidance system. The goal is to extend the MK6 guidance system life to 2042 while lowering the Navy’s future maintenance and support costs and provide a flexible architecture to support new missions and upgrades. Draper continues to maintain the MK6 guidance system currently deployed in the Trident submarine fleet.

Critical to MK6LE program success is affordability and technical risk reduction. Draper is employing sophisticated modeling and simulation techniques to verify designs well in advance of fabricating production hardware. These models are also integrated into a virtual guidance system to provide stimulus to subsystem prototypes to verify their designs.

Execution: Maintain Minuteman III to 2030 and Beyond
As the original Design Agent for the Minuteman III PIGA accelerometer, Draper provides support to Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, the Prime Integrating Contractor for the Air Force. Draper performs accuracy and reliability analyses and addresses the problem of parts obsolescence by qualifying new vendors, parts, and processes, and supports the repair of the Minuteman III PIGA.

Simulation: Enhanced Ground Test (EGT)
Draper conceptualized and designed the Enhanced Ground Test (EGT), which simulates missile environments through a series of nondestructive tests. EGT will be able to assess MK6LE guidance system performance with its new inertial instruments incorporated. This major innovation holds the potential to augment guidance flight tests for accuracy and reliability evaluations as well as to mitigate MK6LE development risk. It will analyze and integrate test data measured during a series of simulated flight tests executed using a precision centrifuge, an aircraft guidance system pod flown on an F-15E, and shock and vibration tests. Test and analysis results (accuracy and reliability) have shown a high correlation to flight performance, verifying the initial EGT approach. Once fully qualified, EGT will supplement missile flight tests to gain further insight into flight performance and to support surveillance activities.

Under Navy sponsorship, Draper established facilities and other resources to replicate Trident D5 missile environments. An 18,000-sq ft Special Test Facility at Hanscom AFB includes a 32-ft centrifuge capable of controlled high-precision acceleration and an electrodynamic shaker capable of strategic profiles.

Cost Reduction: Guidance Repair Consolidation at the Integrated Support Facility
As part of Draper’s expanded role as Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) Guidance Program Systems Integrator, the Laboratory is now responsible for all aspects of guidance system repair. In addition to ongoing 10 PIGA repair at Honeywell in Clearwater, Florida, this responsibility includes management of repair activities at the Integrated Support Facility (ISF) in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Consolidation of repair activities at the ISF is providing the Navy with current cost savings and will provide superior long-term program support.

Managed by Draper and operated by a General Dynamics/Raytheon team, the ISF provides full capability for inertial measurement unit (IMU) and guidance system electronics repair. Equipped with assembly clean room areas and stabilized test piers, the ISF enables pressure/vacuum testing, system/inertial sensor testing, module testing, optical testing, and vibration and centrifuge testing.

Advancing GN&C: Technology for Reentry Vehicles
In addition to maintaining deployed strategic systems and modernizing existing systems, Draper is analyzing the GN&C technology needed to enable Prompt Global Strike (PGS) capability to deliver non-nuclear payloads with high accuracy to virtually anywhere on the globe in less than 1 hour.

Draper has conducted experiments with sponsors to demonstrate some of the technologies needed for PGS. In addition, Draper IR&D studies have been initiated to enable the generation of boost-throughreentry trajectories in near-real time and to provide in-flight target location updates. Proving this guidance capability will provide a technology base for evolving its use on future smaller missiles, such as the Submarine-Launched Global Strike Missile (SLGSM), on tactical submarines such as the SSGN and NSSN.

Contact Information: busdev@draper.com