Integrated Military Systems (IMS) provides rapid-response and agile system-level design, development, and demonstration of advanced strike systems and technologies to address national needs.
Capabilities
Hypersonics
Sandia is a national leader in missile systems, having built and flown more rockets than any other U.S. government sponsored organization apart from NASA. IMS has leveraged decades of expertise in the development in hypersonic flight technology to design, build, and successfully test multiple hypersonic boost-glide systems, including the first boost-glide concept ever tested. These hypersonic flight systems travel at speeds of at least Mach 5, or approximately one mile per second. IMS develops hypersonics in support of the Department of Defense and Sandia’s collaborative design has been adopted as the Common Hypersonic Glide Body for the Army and Navy. Flight test data on these hypersonic boost-glide technologies will anchor ground testing, modeling, and simulation of future concepts.
High Operational Tempo Sounding Rockets
IMS developed the High Operational Tempo Sounding Rocket Program (HOT) in 2018 under direction of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and is responsible for its full system integration. This program is designed to launch relatively inexpensive sounding rockets carrying scientific experiments and prototypes of missile technology. These launches prove whether a prototype rocket and its components — from an onboard computer to a structural bracket — can function in the intense turbulence, heat, and vibration a missile experiences in flight. HOT provides Sandia’s partners with a realistic flight environment, and flight data helps researchers improve technologies and deploy them faster than with conventional validation techniques. This better equips NNSA and the DoD to respond quickly to emerging national security needs. Sandia performed 5 launches in the first 18 months of the HOT program.