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Aegis Readiness Assessment Vehicle Six (ARAV-6)

2026 MODERN NAVY Missile defense BALLISTIC MISSILE FLIGHT TESTING SOLID ROCKET MOTOR

History

The Aegis Readiness Assessment Vehicle Six (ARAV-6) is a U.S. ballistic target vehicle used for air and missile-defense assessment. The U.S. Navy launched an ARAV-6 from the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii on August 6, 2026, during Pacific Dragon 2026.

ARAV vehicles are unguided targets that follow ballistic trajectories to represent missile threats during testing and training. Reporting on the 2026 launch identifies ARAV-6 as part of this target family, but the available sources do not provide a separate technical configuration for the ARAV-6 vehicle.

The ARAV family originated from work at the Naval Surface Warfare Center's White Sands Detachment in New Mexico, where sounding-rocket technology used for NASA missions was adapted into ballistic targets for military testing. The Missile Defense Agency has used ARAV vehicles in exercises involving systems including Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and Patriot.

Pacific Dragon 2026

On August 6, 2026, the U.S. Navy launched ARAV-6 from the Pacific Missile Range Facility during Pacific Dragon 2026. The exercise ran from August 6 to 15 in waters around the Hawaiian Islands and involved forces from Australia, Chile, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Spain and the United States.

Pacific Dragon is a biennial U.S. 3rd Fleet exercise focused on improving cooperation in ballistic missile tracking and interception. The 2026 event combined coordinated missile-defense operations with tactical data-link information sharing and included a broader integrated air and missile-defense scenario. Contemporary accounts of the ARAV-6 launch were published by Defence Industry Europe and Defence Blog.

Design

ARAV vehicles are designed as ballistic target systems rather than operational weapons. They are launched to provide representative missile trajectories that allow sensors, command systems and interceptors to be exercised under realistic conditions.

Kratos describes the wider ARAV family as configurable short- and medium-range ballistic missile targets using staged rocket configurations to provide different trajectories. Published family configurations include Type B, Type C and Type TTO. However, the available material does not identify ARAV-6 as any one of these configurations, so their individual motors and staging arrangements cannot be attributed specifically to ARAV-6.

The broader ARAV family includes spin-stabilized configurations and can incorporate features such as selectable flight events, payload options, separation systems, de-spin systems, attitude control, rate control and optional thrust-vector control. These capabilities are documented for the family and individual listed configurations rather than specifically for ARAV-6.

Program status

The August 6, 2026 launch confirms that ARAV-6 existed as a flight vehicle and was used as a target during Pacific Dragon 2026. The exercise provided participating forces with a live ballistic target for tracking, data collection and missile-defense training.

No separate public technical breakdown of ARAV-6 is provided in the available sources. Its precise stage arrangement, rocket motors, dimensions, mass, range, apogee and payload configuration therefore remain unspecified in the source material.