Kratos Receives Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonics Test Bed (MACH-TB) Contract from Prime Partner Dynetics to Increase US Hypersonic Flight Tests

SAN DIEGO, Nov. 03, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. (NASDAQ: KTOS), a leading National Security Solutions provider, has been awarded a subcontract to increase America’s capacity for hypersonic flight testing. The program, known as Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonics Test Bed (MACH-TB), was awarded by Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Crane Division’s Strategic and Spectrum Missions Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems (S2MARTS) other transaction authority to Kratos partner and prime contractor Dynetics and the MACH-TB Team (the Team) on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD).

Under the MACH-TB contract, the Team will develop an affordable and responsive hypersonic test bed platform to dramatically increase the nation’s capacity for ground and flight testing of hypersonic technologies and payloads by leveraging commercial infrastructure and launch vehicle providers. The MACH-TB Experimentation project will result in a proof of concept and prototype demonstration of modular Experimental Glide Body (EGB) testing hypersonic technologies/experimental payloads in operational trajectories using already available boosters. The MACH-TB program will offer the DoD a national hypersonic testing capability to be leveraged by a broad range of U.S. military hypersonics programs, DoD research programs, industry partners, and stakeholders from academia.

MACH-TB will leverage many of Kratos’ strengths, products, systems, and solutions, including decades of experience and expertise with hypersonic materials and structures gained through the recent acquisition of the Kratos Southern Research Engineering (SRE) business unit, as well as decades of proven hypersonic flight testing and launch vehicle experience within Kratos Defense & Rocket Support Services (DRSS) Division.

Kratos’ DRSS Division is an industry leader in providing rocket, ballistic missile defense, sub orbital research, hypersonic and other systems, with significant commercial launch vehicle capability and hypersonic flight test experience. Kratos will support MACH-TB by providing responsive, reliable, and affordable launch and flight systems, vehicles and services at the operational tempo and cadence necessary to meet the DoD’s emerging needs. Over the past several years, Kratos has made significant investments in affordable, rapidly developed flight-test focused commercial solid rocket motors and hypersonic systems that will augment and expand the range of testing that is available today.

“At Kratos, affordability is a technology, and we are leading from the front in developing launch vehicle and flight-test technologies for the hypersonics community”, said Dave Carter, President of the KDRSS Division. “A recent example of Kratos internally funded, rapid development leadership is our Zeus family of solid-propellant rocket motors, which will provide an affordable and reliable launch capability to support the MACH-TB program and the DoD in meeting their hypersonic test objectives.”

“We are happy to be a part of this incredibly capable and diverse Team tasked with boosting our nation’s capability to conduct responsive and affordable hypersonic testing to more rapidly develop technologies that can be inserted into current and future DoD hypersonic programs”, said Michael Johns, Senior Vice President of Kratos SRE. “As an organization that routinely works on the front lines interfacing with technology developers across the hypersonics industry, we are excited to see the MACH-TB capability come online to provide technology developers with opportunities to affordably mature their technology readiness levels and clear a path to future weapons systems program insertion opportunities.”