The Surface Combat Systems Center at Wallops Island, Virginia, is collaborating with the Aegis shipbuilding and Navy area theater ballistic-missile defense (TBMD) program offices to prepare for an at-sea test in February 2002 that will measure the ability of the latest upgrade to the Aegis combat system to track ballistic-missile targets.
The February test, which will be controlled from Wallops Island and conducted on the newly built destroyer McCampbell (DDG-85), will follow a similar test this month on the Shoup (DDG-86) monitored from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Both tests will evaluate the ability of the new Aegis Baseline 6 Phase 3 software, developed by Lockheed Martin Naval Electronics & Surveillance Systems, to track ballistic missiles.
Navy officials hope to incorporate lessons learned in the January Shoup test in the Baseline 6 Phase 3 program installed on board the McCampbell. The tests will be the first at-sea runs in a tracking engagement for the new software, which will be placed on board six ships, DDGs-85 through -90.
For the McCampbell test, the NASA facility at Wallops Island will launch two low-fidelity targets to an altitude and velocity that mimic those of a ballistic missile. The McCampbell, conducting trials off the New Jersey coast and operating from her builder's yard at Bath Iron Works, will track the targets through the entire launch and flight sequence and develop an intercept firing solution. No actual intercept will be launched. Wallops Island will provide the high-data-rate, superhigh-frequency communications and connectivity with the ship by way of tactical datalinks. A test installation of the Navy's cooperative engagement capability (CEC) system located at Wallops Island also will receive data from the McCampbell.
Navy CEC, which was slated by the' Defense Acquisition Board to start full production in December 2001, will support area TBMD as well as the Navy's theater-wide TBMD program by consolidating the real-time target engagement data provided by multiple shipboard and airborne sensors.
Officials say the tracking capabilities at the shore sites will back up the ships' tracking of the targets and provide a broader perspective on the system's effectiveness.
The Wallops Island-McCampbell test results will be used to continue the evolution of area TBMD functionality for Baseline 6 Phase 3 and the next-generation combat system, Baseline 7 Phase 1, intended for DDGs-91 through -107. All of the Navy's Ticonderoga (CG-47)-class cruisers also will be fitted for area TBMD with Aegis software Baseline 7 Phase 1C starting in fiscal year 2006.
The area TBMD effort (also called "lower tier") builds on testing carried out with a development system called Linebacker, which was installed in the cruisers Lake Erie (CG-70) and Port Royal (CG-73) in 1998. Continuing area TBMD development consists not only of the software programs for the combat systems, but also of the area TBMD missile, the Standard SM-2 Block IVA, and radar and processing system enhancements.
Navy TBMD officials say the missile upgrade, carried out by Raytheon Missile Systems, modifies the Navy's SM-2 Block IV missile by adding an infrared seeker for tracking the heat signature of the hostile ballistic missile as it reenters the atmosphere.
The Aegis software development represents a critical challenge. Baseline 6 Phase 3 is expected to support CEC, the Evolved Sea Sparrow surface-to-air missile, a new variant of the SQQ-89 undersea warfare system, a common datalink management system, and a navigation-sensor-system interface that will provide navigation data to combat systems.
Lockheed Martin delivered the Baseline 6 Phase 3 programs to Wallops Island last fall for the start of combat-systems integration and testing. Wallops Island and Lockheed Martin engineers will collaborate on resolving deficiencies detected in the McCampbell test. The Naval Surface Warfare Center's Dahlgren division will assume responsibility for lifecycle support once the software is fielded.
The TBMD testing for Baseline 6 Phase 3 also dovetails with a parallel effort to shift the Aegis combat system from the current fielded architecture of the Navy's obsolescent proprietary UYK-43 computers to a hierarchy of commercially developed processors the program office hopes will be completed before the introduction of Baseline 7.