– TRW Inc. has been awarded a $107.2 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to refurbish the Stage Four rocket engine, known as the Propulsion System Rocket Engine (PSRE), on the Minuteman III missile.
The PSRE Life Extension and Sustaining Engineering Program (LEP/SEP) contract will extend the service life of the fourth stage engine through the year 2020.
This contract represents the first refurbishment effort for the PSRE and is part of TRW’s overall job as prime integration contractor to sustain and modernize the nation’s ICBMs for the U.S. Air Force.
“TRW is modernizing the entire fleet of 30 year-old Minuteman III propulsion systems under two major efforts,” said Dr. Robert L. Strickler, vice president and general manager, TRW Space & Missile Systems.
“The PSRE contract will refurbish the fourth and final stage of the rocket booster, which is the liquid stage. In a separate effort, TRW is managing the upgrade of the solid rocket motors, stages one through three, under the Propulsion Replacement Program.”
Over the next ten years, TRW will design, develop and deliver replacements for seven flight components of the liquid engine, such as the axial engine actuator motor and the electrical ordnance.
Government technicians at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, the depot for the PSRE program, will install modification kits containing the seven replacement parts. Concurrent with this replacement effort, TRW will continue to provide operational engineering support to sustain the deployed ICBM fleet for the next 13 years.
Atlantic Research Corporation of Gainesville, Va., will provide the replacement flight components and sustainment engineering services as TRW’s sole subcontractor for this effort. Both companies’ engineering and program management operations teams will be co-located at TRW’s Clearfield, Utah facility.
In the Propulsion Replacement Program, TRW and its teammates Thiokol and CSD are replacing aging propulsion systems in the Minuteman III missiles with motors to maintain alert readiness status until 2020.
The first remanufactured Minuteman III was launched on Nov. 13 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., to Kwajalein Missile Range in the Pacific Ocean. The flight successfully tested both the new motors as well as a new guidance system, produced under a guidance replacement program contract with TRW’s teammate Boeing.
The ICBM Prime Integration contract reflects major changes in the management of the nation’s highly successful ICBM program. Since 1954, TRW provided systems engineering and technical assistance to the ICBM System Program Office (SPO), now located at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, who directed a number of associate contractors that provided the elements of the ICBM system.
In December 1997, TRW was competitively selected to serve as the prime contractor integrating the team of ICBM contractors to provide the required systems engineering and subsystems technical expertise for the total ICBM system.
