A Leidos business has won a contract from the Naval Surface Warfare Center that calls for technical support services in a U.S. Department of Defense hypersonic flight testing endeavor.
Under the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonics Test Bed contract, Dynetics will assist with the construction of a vessel enabling vehicle launches as well as the development of an experimental glide body, the Huntsville, Alabama-based subsidiary said Thursday.
Steve Cook, group president of Dynetics at Leidos, remarked that the new NSWC project will ultimately work toward the goal of protecting natural security and will find the Dynetics team anticipating the needs of the military of the future.
“Hypersonics are a top priority for our nation, and we’re honored to be a part of this innovative and vital initiative,” Cook continued.
The test bed prototyped through the contract is intended to be used for several commercially-available launch vehicles carrying hypersonic payloads. It will be created via agile and modular processes and the information gleaned from the experimentation is expected to prove valuable to the DOD, who sponsored the contract through the Crane division of the NSWC. The successful completion of the work will hopefully lead to a proliferation of hypersonic weapon apparatuses.
Dynetics is slated to collaborate with organizations such as Peraton, Sandia National Laboratories, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Stratolaunch on the project. They will additionally team with Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, JRC Integated Systems, Corvid, SpinLaunch, Kitty Hawk Technologies, X-Bow Systems and RLNS, NineTwelve Institute, as well as several other entities spanning small businesses, academic institutions and more.
Organizations such as the Missile Defense Agency, the Navy Conventional Prompt Strike and Army Long Range Hypersonic Weapon are projected to benefit from the centralized hypersonic testing capability engendered by the flight test bed. Air Force hypersonics programs, DOD research efforts, small business, industry and academia will also be impacted.
Furthermore, the contract tasks Dynetics with helping to assemble a modular experimental glide body that is slated to offer ways to efficiently assess technologies in hypersonic environments so that mission-critical weapon acquisition questions can be settled. The company will complete all contract duties in Indiana, Alabama and the Washington, D.C. area.
