Northrop Grumman [NOC] said on Sept. 25 that the U.S. Air Force has awarded it a contract worth about $705 million to deliver the air-to-ground Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW).
“During the next 36 months, Northrop Grumman will further develop the weapon, conduct platform integration and complete the flight test program for rapid prototyping in preparation for rapid fielding,” Northrop Grumman said on Sept. 25. “Work will be performed at the company’s Northridge, California facility and its factory of the future for missile integration at Allegany Ballistics Laboratory in West Virginia.”
Each SiAW, which the Lockheed Martin
[LMT] F-35A is to carry, would cost more than $1.5 million (Defense Daily, Aug. 26, 2022).
While the U.S. Air Force has looked upon SiAW as an outgrowth of Northrop Grumman’s AGM-88G Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile Extended Range (AARGM-ER) for the U.S. Navy, competitors for SiAW have included not just Northrop Grumman, but Lockheed Martin and L3Harris Technologies [LHX].
The Air Force is to field 3,000 SiAWs at a cost of $8.6 billion but, due to the development timeline for SiAW, the Air Force has planned to procure AARGM-ERs as a fill-in until the service can field SiAW.
The latter “will provide strike capability to defeat rapidly relocatable targets as part of an enemy’s anti-access/area denial environment,” Northrop Grumman said on Sept. 25. “To adapt to ever-changing threats, the missile design features open architecture interfaces that will allow for rapid subsystem upgrades to field enhanced capabilities to the warfighter.”
“Phase 2 development is a continuation of the Air Force requirement for this first-of-its-kind Middle Tier Acquisition large weapon program focused on digital engineering, Weapon Open System Architecture and agility,” the company said. “The Air Force is targeting an initial operational capability by 2026. Phase 2 consists of two primary increments: Phase 2.1 concludes with a guided vehicle flight test. Phase 2.2 concludes with three additional flight tests and the delivery of SiAW leave-behind prototype missiles and test assets.”