National Missile Defense (NMD) Test Program

Abstract : This paper describes the challenging task of testing the most complex, expensive, technically evolving, and politically sensitive missile system to be developed to date. The National Missile Defense (NMD) System comprises radars, interceptors, space based sensors, and battle management, command, control, and communications (BMC3) elements. While the integration of these many complex elements into a functional system is no small achievement, the performance verification of this system is an equally challenging task. This paper describes the test components of the NMD test program, their importance to the test program, relationships among the components, and their contributions to NMD test and evaluation which form the basis for the System Engineer to evaluate and verify NMD System performance.