Aerojet’s liquid propellant
Divert and Attitude Control System (DACS) played a critical role in Saturday
night’s successful missile defense test, delivering the Exoatmospheric Kill
Vehicle (EKV) to an intercept and destruction of a mock enemy missile in space
approximately 140 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

Aerojet’s EKV DACS thrusters, firing as commanded by the EKV guidance
system, steered the kill vehicle into a direct collision with the target at a
closing speed of more than 15,000 miles per hour.

This integrated system test (IFT-6) of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense
Segment (GMDS) program — formerly called the National Missile Defense
program — began with a target vehicle launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base,
Calif., at 10:40 p.m. EDT. The target vehicle, containing a dummy warhead and
decoy, was a refurbished Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) with an Aerojet second-stage solid propellant motor.

Defense Support Program satellites, using infrared sensors built by
Aerojet, detected the launch of the target vehicle. An interceptor called the
Payload Launch Vehicle (PLV), which boosts the EKV into space, was then
launched from the Ronald Reagan Missile Site Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall
Islands in the central Pacific Ocean 4,800 miles away. The PLV was powered by
a first-stage solid propellant motor also from Aerojet. The motor originally
was a Minuteman second-stage motor built by Aerojet and later modified by
Aerojet under the U.S. Air Force Rocket Systems Launch Program.

The EKV separated from the PLV in space more than 1,400 miles from the
dummy warhead. After separation, the EKV’s on-board sensors located the
warhead, distinguishing it from the balloon decoy, and fired Aerojet’s EKV
DACS to direct the kill vehicle into the path of the warhead. The two objects
collided and vaporized at approximately 11:10 p.m. EDT, achieving the test’s
“hit-to-kill” objective.

Aerojet’s EKV DACS has performed as commanded on three of the four GMDS
program flight tests that have included it (IFT-3, IFT-4, and IFT-6). On the
fourth test (IFT-5), the EKV did not separate from the PLV, so the DACS was
never engaged.

Aerojet supplies the DACS to The Raytheon Company for integration into the
EKV. Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space provides the PLV. Boeing is the prime
contractor for the GMDS program, which is directed by the Joint Program Office
of the Department of Defense Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
Aerojet, a GenCorp (NYSE: GY – news) company, is a world-recognized aerospace and
defense leader principally serving the space electronics, missile and space
propulsion, and smart munitions and armaments markets. Aerojet’s Web site
address is http://www.aerojet.com .