Advanced Engagement Planning for Nuclear Environments

The Phase I objective is to identify and parameterize the engagement tactics that will be most effective in the nuclear environments of salvage-fuzed and impact-fuzed ballistic missiles. Engagement tactics to be analyzed will include innovative firingtactics, such as shoot-no-look-shoot with variable laddered-down salvos, and flyout patterns that minimize redout backgrounds and exploit atmospheric shielding. Comparisons of engagement tactics with hardening will be done parametrically with respect toballistic missile threats and to the operational capabilities, hardness, and inventory of interceptors. Probability of zero leakage will be the figure of merit. Starmark will use the missile-defense performance and engagement code, National MissileDefense Operability (NMDO), developed for DTRA by the PI, which performs engagement analysis, calculates nuclear environments self-consistently with detonation upon intercept, and calculates the resulting degradation of missile-defense operability andprobability of zero leakage. The Phase II objective will be to delineate the conditions under which the various innovative and conventional engagement tactics can supplant hardening for current and projected missile defense architectures and scenarios.We anticipate teaming in a classified Phase II program with an MDA aerospace/defense contractor. The immediate benefit of this program for MDA will be an analysis of innovative operational alternatives to nuclear hardening that can be planned to be usedeffectively at no cost and with savings up to $20 million per $1 billion cost of the ground-based interceptor element to be deployed. The methodology to be used might have commercial applications in finding operational work-arounds to costly retrofittingand upgrading of capital equipment.