Integrated Composite Armor and Structure for Lightweight Shipping Containers and Launch Canisters for Ballistic Impact Protection of Interceptor Solid

Missile solid rocket motors (SRMs) are vulnerable to small arms fire and blast fragments that may penetrate the missile motor case during transportation and deployment, resulting in potential loss of the launcher, launcher crew and complement of missiles. The challenges is to provide a low cost and lightweight armor solution that will protect the shipping containers and missile launch canisters from small arms fire and blast fragment threats while meeting insensitive munitions (IM) criteria. The VSC Team proposes an innovative, low cost and producible integrated armor and composite structure packaging solution that mitigates IM threats for large diameter SRMs by improving ballistic protection. This innovative IM packaging solution uses V System Composites (VSC) HyPerSHIELD ballistic protection concept coupled with the HyPerVARTMr composite manufacturing process for building large, affordable unitized structures with aerospace level quality. In Phase I, feasibility of these IM packaging improvements will be developed and demonstrated for the Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI) missile system through design, analysis, and material characterization testing. The Phase II program will build on Phase I concepts with the design, fabrication and testing of prototype sub-scale articles that verify analysis predictions, and evaluate ballistic performance of the integrally armored composite structure against IM threats.