Captive flight testing of a kinetic kill vehicle.

摘要

An experimental approach for the captive flight ground-testing of a prototypical exoatmospheric kinetic kill vehicle is described. The primary objective of the test is to evaluate target tracking and intercept guidance control algorithms. Test hardware is described, including the vehicle; the suspension, launch, and recovery systems; the hyper-velocity target simulator; and the diagnostics systems. Initial test results are reported.