Miniaturized, Low Weight, Low Cost Interceptor Components for the Miniature Kill Vehicle (MKV)

In order to prove the concept of a miniature kill vehicle, many innovative techniques are being employed including the use of state of the art platform Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) or systems on a chip. The schedule for flight testing of a miniature kill vehicle necessitates that the full tactical capability for environments must take a lower priority to concept demonstration in a relatively benign laboratory or hover test environment. A parallel (non-intrusive) development of a radiation tolerant miniature kill vehicle mission processor will allow the overall program to benefit by making the more capable system available to the program for hover test and subsequent flight testing. This proposed, more capable, system includes a higher level of functional integration through the use of the latest generation of the system on a chip FPGA available (Xilinx Virtex-4) and possible inclusion of a widely used commercially available processor. The resulting system, as shown in the figure would provide two key improvements. Namely, the radiation environment would be addressed by design and assessment of parts capability. Secondly, the signal processing, power dissipation, and volume requirements would be given significant consideration, allowing for overall system capability growth and lower cost.