Pentagon Will Receive New ICBM-Killing Next-Generation Interceptor in 2027

by Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

(Washington DC) It’s called a “bolt out of the blue,” … a massive incoming salvo of enemy ICBMs fired in close coordination to overwhelm and annihilate an enemy, rendering them too devastated to respond or counterattack. Concerns about the prospect of this kind of rapid-fire nuclear attack form the conceptual basis for why the Pentagon operates all three legs of its nuclear triad to ensure deterrence by ensuring a devastating counterattack. 

The threat of a massive, catastrophic second strike nuclear response from ballistic missile submarines secretly lurking in dark waters or nuclear-armed stealth aircraft is designed to prevent an enemy from thinking it could survive through any bolt-out-of-the-blue response or countermeasure.

This is the threat scenario, wherein a rogue nation or great power rival decides to risk a massive first-strike nuclear ICBM attack, is why the Pentagon has been fast-tracking its promising new Next-Generation Interceptor program.

The Pentagon will receive a new ICBM-destroying Next-Generation Interceptor from Lockheed Martin by as soon as 2027, due to the successful application of digital engineering, software and hardware prototyping, successful testing and design model progress. The new NGI will soon take to the sky for its first intercept “flight” where its ability to track and destroy an ICBM target will be tested.

However, the existence of the air and undersea legs of the nuclear triad do not remove the need for ground-based missile defenses to operate with an ability to track and “intercept” or “destroy” multiple incoming ICBMs racing through space at one time. This is why the Pentagon continues to accelerate its Next-Generation Interceptor program such that it arrives several years earlier than anticipated. The fundamental concept of operation is to engineer a single interceptor armed with multiple “kill vehicles” capable of tracking and intercepting multiple ICBMs at one time.

“Our design features multiple kill vehicle payloads to reduce the number of interceptors required to defeat a single ballistic missile threat to our nation,” Todd Stevens, director of Advanced Programs, NGI at Lockheed Martin, said in a written statement provided to Warrior by Lockheed officials.

Lockheed reports it has completed Preliminary Design Reviews and has verified the maturity of the design, a key step toward building and then “firing” prototypes and demonstrator NGIs.  The mention of digital engineering is quite significant, as that has proven to be a massive speed and efficiency-improving technological strategy. Advanced computer simulations are now able to very precisely replicate the key weapons systems performance parameters without needing to “bend metal” and build 10 different designs to discern an optimal path forward.