The U.S. Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin [LMT]’s missiles and fire control segment in Orlando, Fla., a $240 million contract for the development, test, and integration of the company’s AGM-158D, 1,000 nautical mile “extreme range” Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Munition (JASSM).
“Work will be performed in Orlando, Florida, and is expected to be completed Feb. 1, 2025,” the Pentagon said in a June 1st contract announcement.
The AGM-158D is to have new wing and chine designs and “software updates for increased survivability,” DoD has said.
The Pentagon has been considering increasing production of the JASSM family of missiles to a yearly rate of 1,100 at Lockheed Martin’s new plant in Troy, Ala., and the existing one in Orlando.
DoD officials have said that the Pentagon’s fiscal 2024 munitions budget of $30.6 billion–a 24 percent increase over last year’s request of $24.7 billion–stems from the Pentagon’s focus on the Indo-Pacific (Defense Daily, March 14).
The requested increase is largely attributable to tactical and strategic missiles, not ammunition, as the latter’s funding in the DoD budget is below the amount that Congress appropriated last year.
The Air Force asks for more than $1.8 billion for the AGM-158B JASSM-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) in fiscal 2024, a $916 million increase from last year’s enacted amount. While the increase would fund the same, current “max production” of 550 missiles annually as last year, the fiscal 2024 budget also undertakes a Large Lot-Multi-year Procurement (MYP) that invests in ramping up production capacity beyond that 550.
The Air Force’s inventory includes more than 4,000 AGM-158 JASSMs, including the AGM-158B JASSM-ER, while the U.S. Navy has about 200 AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM).
DoD plans to buy LRASM and the Raytheon Technologies [RTX] AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) under the same “Large Lot” MYP strategy.
The Air Force has been assessing its inventory of munitions and future needs for high-end conflicts in which the service plans to use the Joint All Domain Command and Control architecture for rapid targeting of mobile adversaries, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown said in February (Defense Daily, Feb. 13).
Brown said that the Air Force is in a “pretty good spot for most of the munitions,” but there are “a handful” of concern.