James Dean

FLORIDA TODAY

An Air Force C-17 aircraft opens its cargo door at 25,000 feet, a parachute shoots out and a carriage holding a simulated ballistic missile is yanked out into the sky.

The carriage releases the missile, which falls free before lighting a solid-fueled motor and rocketing away on a suborbital trajectory.

Within minutes, a live missile intercepts the air-launched target low in space, or as it reenters the atmosphere, and blows it to bits — if the U.S. Missile Defense Agency test is successful.

“We are shooting a bullet with a bullet, miles in the sky,” said Dan Kelly, president of Coleman Aerospace, which builds and launches target vehicles for such tests. “The bullet we’re knocking down is a bullet that wants to bring harm to us.”

Orlando-based Coleman on Friday cut the ribbon on a refurbished 15,000 square-foot facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station where it will assemble target missiles, relocating work previously performed in Yuma, Arizona.

The 150-person company, acquired this week by Aerojet Rocketdyne from L3 Technologies for $15 million, will base about 20 employees at the facility in the Cape’s Area 57 for each test missile assembled.

“With the addition of this facility, all that work will stay in the state of Florida,” said Kelly.

The state Department of Transportation, through Space Florida, contributed $600,000 to modernize the mothballed building that once processed solid motors for Delta II rockets.

“It’s come a long way,” said Kelly. “This is a state-of-the-art facility at this point.”

Coleman has launched 34 target missiles since 1995 from the ground and air. The single- or two-stage rockets use decommissioned Peacekeeper and Minuteman motors provided by Aerojet Rocketdyne to simulate short- and long-range ballistic missiles.

The business aspires to grow beyond its missile defense mission to offer commercial launches for the growing small satellite market, using a planned three-stage, air-launched rocket called Hera II.

There’s no target date for a satellite launch, and the company had no estimate of how many more jobs that work might add, but the Cape facility is key to the strategy.

“It really is part of the vision of growing the company,” said Kelly. “Because we can build up to six targets in this facility at one time.”

The missile targets, depending on the number of stages, measure roughly 35 feet long and weigh about 50,000 pounds.

Once the Cape facility opens in April, stages weighing about 17,000 pounds will be trucked in and unloaded onto raised rails where the target is assembled, tested and lifted by crane onto a carrier. From there, it will be transported less than a mile to a C-17 at the Cape’s Skid Strip for flight to wherever the test is being performed, often near Hawaii.

The company’s last mission was flown there on Halloween last year, where it was one of multiple targets launched.

“The ground crew, they don’t know if it’s an exercise or it’s real, because they run exercises all the time,” said Kelly. “Everything looks real on the screen.”

The mood in the control room is tense as the target missile is dropped. Engineers hope to see the engines light and hear the words, “Good target, we have a good target.”

"We do our part," said Kelly, “and they knock us out of the air.”

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 orjdean@floridatoday.com.And follow on Twitter at@flatoday_jdeanand on Facebook atfacebook.com/jamesdeanspace.