By Marina Malenic
The Army said last week that it has awarded three development contracts to set the stage for a new artillery warhead competition.
Aerojet [GY], ATK [ATK] and General Dynamics [GD] will battle for the Multiple Launch System (MLRS) Alternative Warhead Program (AWP). “We conducted source selection activities after the October [acquisition decision memorandum] was signed,” MLRS Program Manager Col. Dave Rice told Defense Daily. “We were generally very pleased with the technical robustness of all proposals. They stood up well to the engineering rigor of the selection process and contained enough information with which to begin building the appropriate performance models to inform the [Analysis of Alternatives] due at Milestone B.”
The Defense Department this summer revised its cluster munitions policy, mandating technology upgrades intended to mitigate harm to civilians and friendly troops. The new rules state that more than 99 percent of the submunitions that make up any given cluster bomb in the U.S. inventory must detonate on impact, thereby reducing the quantity of potentially dangerous unexploded ordnance left behind on a battlefield (Defense Daily, July 14).
Limiting the amount of extant live ordnance would diminish the danger to both civilians and friendly troops maneuvering in a bomb-saturated area following bombardment, according to the Pentagon. The new regulations, outlined in a memo signed by Defense Secretary Gates in June, would take effect in 2018 and apply to all DoD stockpiles, as well as Foreign Military Sales (FMS) orders.
MLRS will be the first weapon in the U.S. arsenal to begin conforming to the new policy via technological improvements.
Lockheed Martin [LMT] currently produces two MLRS variants–one with a unitary warhead and precision, satellite-guided capability; and the DPICM cluster variant.
During the Oct. 22 review, the service’s acquisition chief, Dean Popps, and other top officials gave program managers the green light to temporarily delay production of the DPICM version of the munition, instead buying only the GPS-guided unitary variant in the near term.
“We are building all Unitary MLRS rockets until production cut-in of the AWP rocket, which we anticipate in FY ’14,” Rice said.
“We are right now in the process of building the very last DPICM rockets,” he added. “These rockets are the last U.S. Army DPICM rockets as well as those the [United Arab Emirates] ordered. So, by about Thanksgiving, the U.S. Army is out of the DPICM rocket business.” About 2,500 DPICM rockets will remain in the U.S. inventory until the AWP rockets become available, tentatively expected in Fiscal 2015, according to Rice. Prototyping activities will last approximately 18 months, at which point a winner will be chosen to begin Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD), which will last about 36 months and cost $150 million, Rice said. “These costs are very consistent with the former GMLRS DPICM and Unitary rocket development programs,” he added.