The U.S. Air Force’s fiscal 2025 budget contains $375 million–$77 million more than last year’s request–for the $8.8 billion Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) program.
Last September, Northrop Grumman [NOC] said that the Air Force had awarded the company a $705 million contract for SiAW development, integration, and rapid prototyping in advance of “rapid fielding” (Defense Daily, Sept. 25, 2023).
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 included not just Northrop Grumman, but Lockheed Martin and
L3Harris Technologies [LHX].
The Air Force is to field 3,000 SiAWs 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.
Each SiAW, which the Lockheed Martin F-35A is to carry, would cost more than $1.5 million (Defense Daily, Aug. 26, 2022).
The weapon is “to strike rapidly re-locatable targets that create the Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) environment for 5th generation and future advanced aircraft,” the Air Force said. “SiAW targets include theater ballistic missile launchers, land attack and anti-ship cruise missile launchers, jammers, anti-satellite systems, and integrated air defense systems.”
Most of the $77 million requested increase for SiAW in fiscal 2025 is for testing and buying long-lead items for the testing, the Air Force said. Industry has said that the service has a 2026 goal for SiAW initial operational capability.
SiAW Phases 1 and 2 are a Middle Tier Acquisition (MTA) program that have focused on “initial capability on a surrogate aircraft in less than five years,” the Air Force said. The current Phase 2 is to have four flight tests.
“In Phase 3, sometimes referred to as the ‘post-MTA’ phase, the SiAW program plans to transition to a Major Capability Acquisition (MCA) where the capability will be improved and the system will be integrated on the F-35A,” the Air Force said.