The Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) is the

Raytheon Raytheon is a business unit of RTX Corporation and is a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. Founded in 1922, it merged in 2020 with Unite ...

-manufactured interceptor component with subcontractor

Aerojet Aerojet was an American rocket and missile propulsion manufacturer based primarily in Rancho Cordova, California, with divisions in Redmond, Washington, Orange and Gainesville in Virginia, and Camden, Arkansas. Aerojet was owned by GenCorp, ...

of the U.S.

Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD), previously National Missile Defense (NMD), is an anti-ballistic missile system implemented by the United States of America for defense against ballistic missiles, during the midcourse phase of ballistic t ...

(GMD), part of the larger National Missile Defense system. The EKV is boosted to an intercept trajectory by a boost vehicle (missile), where it separates from the boost vehicle and autonomously collides with an incoming warhead. The EKV is launched by the

Ground-Based Interceptor The Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) is the anti-ballistic missile component of the United States' Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. Description This interceptor is made up of a boost vehicle, constructed by Orbital Sciences Corporatio ...

(GBI) missile, the

launch vehicle A launch vehicle is typically a rocket-powered vehicle designed to carry a payload (a crewed spacecraft or satellites) from Earth's surface or lower atmosphere to outer space. The most common form is the ballistic missile-shaped multistage ...

of the GMD system. The EKV's own rockets and fuel are for corrections in the trajectory, not for further acceleration. The successor to the EKV, known as the Redesigned Kill Vehicle (RKV), was scheduled to debut in 2025. The RKV program, headed by

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

and lead

subcontractor A subcontractor is a person or business which undertakes to perform part or all of the obligations of another's contract, and a subcontract is a contract which assigns part of an existing contract to a subcontractor. A general contractor, prime ...

Raytheon, was canceled by the

Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and supervising the six U.S. armed services: the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, ...

on August 21, 2019. Earlier in the year, the Pentagon had issued a stop work order on the project following a design review deferment in December 2018 due to the failure of critical components meeting technical specification. Raytheon is contracted to sustain, upgrade, and repair the EKV through 2034 until after the deployment of the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI), which will start to replace the EKV in 2030.

Characteristics

* Weight: approx. 140 lb (64 kg) * Length: 55 in (4 ft. 7 in.) (1.4 m) * Diameter: 24 in (2 ft.) (0.6 m) * Speed of projectile: roughly 10 km/s (22,000 mph)

References

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20080315061300/http://www.raytheon.com/products/ekv/ * https://archive.today/20060314045159/http://www.oss.goodrich.com/ExoatmosphericKillVehicle.shtml Space weapons Raytheon Company products {{Spacecraft-stub

Characteristics

See also

References

External links