The Defense Department plans next month to conduct the second of two major technical reviews for the Next Generation Interceptor competition, assessing Northrop Grumman's design and select components for a homeland defense guided-missile prototype after completing a similar review in October of the same for Lockheed Martin.
The Missile Defense Agency plans a preliminary design review of Northrop Grumman’s NGI proposal -- the company is partnered with Raytheon for the estimated $17 billion contest -- in January, according to a senior agency official.
“We held a major technical design review with one of the offerors two months ago,” Rear Adm. Douglas Williams, MDA’s test director, told the House Armed Services Committee on Dec. 7. “And we are holding the first technical design review for the second offeror next month, in the month of January.”
Between late July and last week, Williams was acting MDA director while the Senate nomination of the director, Lt. Gen. Heath Collins, was held up with nearly all other senior officer promotions by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).
“Both offerors are performing,” Williams said. “We have produced an incredibly mature design to date.”
Earlier this fall, industry officials expressed hope that MDA might conduct a review of Northrop’s NGI design before the end of the calendar year.
Both competitors have spent more than two years maturing technologies, testing critical parts for survivability and developing software for a guided missile capability of intercepting an intercontinental ballistic missile.
The NGI program aims to produce a new homeland defense ground-based interceptor designed to counter North Korean -- and possibly future Iranian -- long-range nuclear-armed missiles by providing new boosters to carry multiple kill vehicles that are capable of defending against a greater number of increasingly complex adversary threats.
MDA’s fiscal year 2023 budget of $1.7 billion for the project called for the NGI program to complete assembly and checkout of subsystems for the all-up rounds, including seekers, avionics, motors and payload.
In FY-24, MDA was hoping to dial up advanced component development and prototype spending to $2 billion -- but the agency is currently tethered to FY-23 spending levels under a stopgap spending bill funding DOD through January.
In March 2021, MDA selected Lockheed and Northrop Grumman to develop NGI proposals as part of a funded plan to carry two vendors through technology development -- with a goal to complete critical design review and select a winner in 2025. DOD leaders are also entertaining an idea -- which is not accounted for in the Pentagon’s future budget blueprint -- of potentially carrying both contractors into production.