DAYTON, Ohio–Providing “flex” capacity for the U.S. Air Force to ramp up the production of certain missiles to hit mobile targets may be a future focus for service leaders and one that is likely to be the subject of pushes and pulls among and within Congress and the Air Force.
Armaments staff in the Air Force, for example, want to double the capacity to build the Lockheed Martin
[LMT] Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) family from an Air Force advertised maximum of 550 missiles annually to 1,100.
“Probably every sophisticated observer looking at this is trying to understand what they may see as inconsistencies, but I think it’s pretty consistent that what you’re seeing here is you’re working with Congress and the industrial base so that you’re able to have that flexibility to reach where you might need to go,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Jason Bartolomei, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s (AFLCMC) program executive officer for armament, told reporters this week during a briefing at AFLCMC’s annual industry days conference.
“The specific quantities and the operational needs of the [Air Force] chief [of staff] and the warfighter are going to have very specific demands, based on what the operational realities are, and myself and the senior leadership are trying to make sure that we’re gonna be able to flex and reach where it is that the senior leaders might need to go,” he said.
While the Air Force has said that the maximum build of the JASSM family of missiles is 550 per year–a number that the Air Force requested in fiscal 2024, AFLCMC’s armaments directorate at Eglin AFB, Fla., said last December that it intends to award a more than three-year, cost plus fixed fee contract modification by this October to Lockheed Martin to allow a doubling in the Air Force’s production capacity estimate for the AGM-158B JASSM-Extended Range, the AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), and the AGM-158D JASSM-Extreme Range, which is to have a range of 1,000 miles against mobile targets.
“The scope of this contract modification includes direction to increase the JASSM/LRASM inventory to a yearly capacity rate of quantity 1,100 in the new JASSM production facility in Troy, Ala., in combination with the existing facility [in Orlando],” per last December’s business notice. “In order to accomplish the new direction, tooling (including supplier tooling and special test equipment) is needed. This requirement is to procure equipment needed to increase JASSM/LRASM production to a maximum rate where installation is required. As Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control’s obligations under existing contracts continue, any government-owned peculiar equipment will not be available to any second source.”
The Air Force fiscal 2024 budget request said that the AGM-158D “provides Weapon Data Link (WDL) capability to re-target the missile, post-launch, against relocatable or higher priority targets during mission execution.”
“AGM-158D was originally planned for a Lot 20/FY22 cut-in but has slipped 2 years to Lot 22/FY24 funding year to support joint interoperability requirements,” the request said.
The AGM-158D is to have new wing and chine designs and “software updates for increased survivability,” DoD has said.
On June 1, the Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $240 million development contract for AGM-158D (Defense Daily, June 1).
On May 18, Lockheed Martin received a more than $750 million, Lot 21 JASSM-ER contract and a more than $443 million Lot 7 LRASM contract.
The Air Force’s $1.7 billion fiscal 2024 request for the JASSM family includes $916 million for the 550 missiles. Another nearly $770 million is to undertake an “economic order quantity” Large Lot-Multi-year Procurement that invests in ramping up production capacity beyond 550. That ramp up looks to be a bridge too far for Congress, as House and Senate appropriators have removed that funding in their versions of the fiscal 2024 defense appropriations bill.