Our Contribution
APL, in cooperation with the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), the Japan Ministry of Defense, and U.S. Navy sailors aboard USS John Paul Jones, completed the first live-fire intercept using the new Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA guided missile during a February 2017 flight test in Hawaii. APL led key “end-to-end” system-level performance analysis in collaboration with the government–industry team for the SM-3 Block IIA missile, cooperatively developed by the United States and Japan. APL’s high-fidelity modeling and simulation of the weapon and missile system provided key performance predictions to plan and safely execute this complex test on the flight test range. The missile, designed to be fired from Aegis ships and Aegis Ashore sites, is capable of countering more advanced and longer-range threats than the deployed SM-3 Block IB.