Overview

Orbital is an industry-leading provider of suborbital launch vehicles for the nation's missile defense systems. In the last 10 years we have conducted nearly 50 major launches for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), the Air Force, the Army and Navy to develop, test and enhance U.S. missile defense systems.

Missile Defense Interceptors

Through our midcourse-phase Orbital Boost Vehicle (OBV) and boost-phase Kinetic Energy Interceptors (KEI) programs, Orbital is a major supplier of interceptor boosters designed to carry "kill vehicles" to intercept hostile missiles launched against the United States and our troops and allies overseas. OBV is the sole interceptor booster for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) segment and is designed to intercept and destroy long-range enemy missiles in the midcourse phase of their flight before they reenter the Earth's atmosphere.

KEI is part of MDA's Boost Defense Segment (BDS) and is intended to intercept and destroy enemy missiles in the early boost phase of flight, when they are at their most vulnerable. These interceptors are part of a layered missile defense system for defending the nation, our armed forces and our allies against ballistic missile attacks.

Missile Defense Targets

Orbital is also a primary supplier of highly reliable target vehicles that serve as "threat simulators" used in the development and testing of missile defense systems. We design, build and launch a wide range of interceptor, signatures and countermeasures, and special-purpose target vehicles tailored to provide high-fidelity facsimiles of enemy missile threats to test and verify missile defense system performance. Orbital's target vehicles support a variety of programs including Patriot/PAC-3, THAAD, Navy Theater/Aegis BMD, Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) and LEAP missile defense systems.

OBV utilizes Pegasus commercial technology

Orbital has a key role in the two major interceptor programs GMD and KEI