The U.S. Air Force is buying Strategic Anti-jam Beam-forming Receiver Y-code (SABR-Y) GPS and antenna kits for Boeing [BA] Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) in response to an urgent operational need (UON) from Pacific Air Forces in February 2018.
Boeing received an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity $800 million contract in March for JDAM, including more than 23,000 JDAMs in Lot 24, and a majority of the units in Lot 24 are the SABR-Y variant, according to the company.
Air Force procurement of SABR-Y began with 1,000 of 45,000 JDAMs in a Lot 22 award on March 30, 2018.
The unit cost of a JDAM guidance kit with SABR-Y is $35,000, according to the Air Force.
The service requested about $208 million in fiscal 2021 for 16,800 guidance kits, 3,500 laser sensors, test equipment, and engineering support.
The House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal 2021 funding bill includes nearly $222 million for JDAM–a $15 million increase over the administration’s budget request to buy more JDAM laser kits.
“SABR-Y is an example of a program moving very quickly to get at a much needed warfighting capability,” Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper told reporters in response to a question on SABR-Y during a media availability on July 14. “Getting at anti-jam capability, I expect that’s the norm, not just for high-end warfighting. Jamming GPS is something that even permissive environments will start seeing. You don’t have to be a peer competitor to deny satellite-based navigation so I expect it will be the staple, and the more we buy that are in SABR-Y configuration, the cheaper the per unit price will be.”
Roper said that his hope was to keep the price of the SABR-Y configuration close to the standard JDAM configuration price but that the Air Force may have to bear increased per unit JDAM costs to ensure munition lethality.
“As a stop-gap capability [for GPS-denied environments], the Air Force is working to procure SABR-Y as a follow-on requirement until M-Code integration is achieved,” according to the Air Force fiscal 2021 budget request. “The SABR-Y tail kit will increase anti-jam capabilities in GPS degraded theaters, and leverages existing JDAM tail kit designs, however; per unit costs will increase with the upgraded GPS receiver.”
The Air Force said in the budget request that it continues integration efforts on the General Atomics‘ MQ-9 Reaper and the Lockheed Martin [LMT] F-35 Lightning II.