Northrup Grumman has announced the re-designing of US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) target vehicles with a new propulsion module.

Specifically, the new design replaces the target’s enduring Trident C4 first stage solid rocket motor with a Peacekeeper SR119 motor.

This change provides extended range, lift capability and payload capacity for target vehicle missions, the US defence prime stated in an update on 27 August 2024.

ICBM target vehicles are representations of ballistic missile threats that the Missile Defense Agency use to test the efficacy of the country’s missile defence systems such as Aegis and Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems.

Northrup Grumman completed the Critical Design Review of its re-design earlier this month, and the re-designated vehicle is scheduled to take its first flight before the end of 2024.

However, the unique part of the new target vehicle design is that Northrup Grumman made use of augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) to validate the vehicle’s new integration and stacking operations.

Engineering using emerging digital tech

In Defence, these forms of digital reality are currently used in manufacturing and engineering to help troubleshoot in a secure environment that saves time and costs.

According to GlobalData forecasts, the AR market alone will be worth $100bn by 2030, up from $22bn in 2022.

The development of the ICBM target is the first target programme to leverage the proven technologies to fully animate the vehicle’s factory integration and field operations, also known as ‘pathfinding’. Pathfinding provides a lower risk setting to fully vet new integration, stacking and test operations on inert hardware.

Of course, this is not the first time that emerging technologies have been used for similar manufacturing purposes.

With the rise in military demand on a contentious world stage, one of Europe’s foremost missile manufacturers, MBDA UK, set up its own Digital Battlespace at its Stevenage site – which has now reached full operational capability – to test various combinations of its weapons portfolio through digital twin technology.