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The first example of the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent missile will fly by the end of calendar year 2023 from Vandenberg Space Force Base, Calif., program officials revealed, while emphasizing that there’s no further margin to extend the Minuteman III system without risking the credibility of the intercontinental ballistic missile force.
“We’re … already in critical design reviewfor the subsystems, and we’re months away from first flight,” Air Force GBSD program manager Col. Jason Bartolomei said in an AFA Doolittle Leadership Center virtual forum June 14. The GBSD is being developed by Northrop Grumman.
By the end of calendar 2023, Bartolomei said, “we’ll be at Vandenberg, and we’ll be flying the first test flights of the new weapon system.” The missile is already flying in a “modeling and simulation environment,” he said.
The GBSD is expected to achieve initial operational capability in 2029 and full operational capability with 400 missiles seven years later in 2036, Bartolomei said. GBSDs will be deployed to missile silos an average of once a week for nine years, officials said.
While the deployment schedule is challenging, Bartolomei said, he is confident it will happen because of the exhaustive modeling and simulation done on the system to find precisely the right combination of cost, capability, and performance.
During the technology maturation and risk reduction phase, which lasted from 2016 to 2020, contractors created “six billion different configurations” of the missile, showing the “cost versus capability of their design for every requirement;” a “staggering” statistic, Bartolomei said. “You can’t do that unless you’re operating in” a digital environment, he said.
The first review of the all-up system was a six-hour session “in the model,” he added. “Both of our technical teams … were able to follow Northrop Grumman’s design architecture,” he said.
https://www.airforcemag.com/new-gbsd-will-fly-in-2023-no-margin-left-for-minuteman/
“We’re … already in critical design reviewfor the subsystems, and we’re months away from first flight,” Air Force GBSD program manager Col. Jason Bartolomei said in an AFA Doolittle Leadership Center virtual forum June 14. The GBSD is being developed by Northrop Grumman.
By the end of calendar 2023, Bartolomei said, “we’ll be at Vandenberg, and we’ll be flying the first test flights of the new weapon system.” The missile is already flying in a “modeling and simulation environment,” he said.
The GBSD is expected to achieve initial operational capability in 2029 and full operational capability with 400 missiles seven years later in 2036, Bartolomei said. GBSDs will be deployed to missile silos an average of once a week for nine years, officials said.
While the deployment schedule is challenging, Bartolomei said, he is confident it will happen because of the exhaustive modeling and simulation done on the system to find precisely the right combination of cost, capability, and performance.
During the technology maturation and risk reduction phase, which lasted from 2016 to 2020, contractors created “six billion different configurations” of the missile, showing the “cost versus capability of their design for every requirement;” a “staggering” statistic, Bartolomei said. “You can’t do that unless you’re operating in” a digital environment, he said.
The first review of the all-up system was a six-hour session “in the model,” he added. “Both of our technical teams … were able to follow Northrop Grumman’s design architecture,” he said.
https://www.airforcemag.com/new-gbsd-will-fly-in-2023-no-margin-left-for-minuteman/
