Development of an Integrated Composite Raceway and Missile Harness-Fairing Assembly

The current state of the art for routing electrical power and signal between missile defense booster inter-stages relies on post-missile assembly manual cable routing which is labor intensive, high cost, and prone to error. As interceptor technology continues to evolve, the requirement is for higher wire count, more complex electrical routing of power and signal conductors, interfaces and connectors. The current state of the art for electrical harness design and fabrication methods, as applied to the Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) vehicle, results in components which exceed the weight design objective by a significant margin. The KEI missile represents a unique opportunity for technology integration because it is currently in the early design phase. The proposed program addresses the KEI raceway fairing and wire harness design objective and development milestone, and is synchronized with the KEI program. In a phased development approach, the program will provided the necessary design, analyses and component verification testing to support the Boost Flight-1 preliminary and critical design reviews currently scheduled for 3rd QTR CY 06 and 4th QTR CY 07 respectively. The program development effort will lead to component demonstration on Boost Flight-1 currently scheduled for 4th QTR CY08.