Northrop Grumman-Led ICBM Prime Integration Team Participates in 200th Test Launch of a Minuteman III Missile

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Bal­lis­tic Mis­sile (ICBM) Prime Team, led by Northrop Grum­man Cor­po­ra­tion (NYSE:NOC), par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 200th sched­uled oper­a­tional test launch of an ICBM from Van­den­berg Air Force Base (AFB), Calif., on June 16, 2010.

Des­ig­nat­ed Glo­ry Trip 200GM‑1, the launch at 3:01 a.m. PDT marked more than 40 years of demon­strat­ed accu­ra­cy, avail­abil­i­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty of Min­ute­man III on-alert deterrence. 

The launch was sup­port­ed by the 90th Mis­sile Wing at F.E. War­ren AFB, Wyo. It car­ried a sin­gle, inert reen­try vehi­cle atop a ful­ly mod­ern­ized boost­er, guid­ance set and post-boost vehi­cle, all pro­grams man­aged through the ICBM Prime Team. The mis­sile trav­eled approx­i­mate­ly 4,800 miles in about 30 min­utes, hit­ting a tar­get in the Ronald Rea­gan Test Site near Kwa­jalein Atoll in the west­ern chain of the Mar­shall Islands. 

“The Prime Team is proud to sup­port the U.S. Air Force in its exe­cu­tion of this suc­cess­ful oper­a­tional test launch pro­gram that con­tin­ues to demon­strate the ongo­ing excep­tion­al per­for­mance of the ICBM weapon sys­tem,” said Tony Spe­har, vice pres­i­dent and pro­gram man­ag­er for the ICBM Prime Inte­gra­tion Con­tract (IPIC).

“Min­ute­man III has been alert ready for near­ly four decades. We help the Air Force ensure the weapon sys­tem remains a cred­i­ble deter­rent force now and far into the future,” Spe­har not­ed. “Each and every day, Prime Team per­son­nel assist with col­lect­ing and eval­u­at­ing data for every aspect of weapon sys­tem readi­ness. Flight tests are part of this ongo­ing assess­ment that ensures the ICBM force of 450 Min­ute­man mis­siles will con­tin­ue to pro­vide crit­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties for deter­rence of our adver­saries and assur­ance for the Unit­ed States and its allies.” 

Oper­a­tional test launch­es assess and demon­strate the effec­tive­ness of the weapon sys­tem. U.S. Air Force Glob­al Strike Com­mand and Twen­ti­eth Air Force make every effort to max­i­mize the oper­a­tional real­ism in the con­duct of each flight test. 

To meet this objec­tive, the ICBM Prime Team deliv­ers infor­ma­tion regard­ing site selec­tion for test assets and reviews flight test hard­ware con­fig­u­ra­tion. Prime Team activ­i­ties are per­formed before, dur­ing and after each ICBM test launch for the 526th ICBM Sys­tems Group at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, which strives to obtain as much per­for­mance infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble to ana­lyze and eval­u­ate the “health” of the Min­ute­man weapon system. 

Flight test­ing of the Min­ute­man III began in August 1968 dur­ing the devel­op­ment of the mis­sile. The first fol­low-on oper­a­tional test launch, GT1GM, occurred on March 23, 1971, at Van­den­berg AFB. 

Northrop Grumman’s ICBM Prime Inte­gra­tion Con­tract pro­gram is head­quar­tered in Clearfield, Utah, and employs more than 700 peo­ple, includ­ing team­mate and sub­con­trac­tor per­son­nel. The ICBM Prime Team includes three prin­ci­pal team­mates – Boe­ing, Lock­heed Mar­tin, ATK and more than 20 subcontractors. 

Text- / Bildquelle (source):
Ansprech­part­ner / con­tact:
Bob Bish­op
Northrop Grum­man Aero­space Sys­tems
310.812.5227
Cell: 310.251.0261
bob.j.bishop@ngc.com