The Air Force requirements shop is working the details for a potential new-start program to field a maritime version of the air service’s venerable Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), with plans to issue a formal solicitation later this year, a senior program official said yesterday.
“We received interest in pursuing a maritime version of JASSM to strike ships,” Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] JASSM Program Director Alan Jackson told reporters during a telephone briefing yesterday. While declining to go into any specifics on the program, Jackson said the effort would likely be a new-start endeavor “in the not too distant future.”
Jackson’s comments come as the Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a follow-on contract for lot nine of JASSM, which included a buy of the extended-range (ER) version of the missile, according to a company statement issued this week.
The contract will cover 170 JASSM missiles and 30 ER variants, as well as the associated systems engineering work.
In terms of the necessary work to modify either the baseline JASSM or the extended range version of the missile, Jackson said the work would be fairly minimal, depending on what kinds of capabilities Air Force leaders would want to have on board.
The weapon, in whatever configuration, “would nicely fit the need of a maritime use” and would “meet most of if not all of the Air Force’s needs in this role” according to Jackson. “It is our vision that there would be relatively few modifications to the existing JASSM missiles.”
That said, Jackson declined to comment on what changes to the missile would be needed to the weapon’s sensor and tracking system to engage moving targets. The current JASSM is only designed to take out stationary targets.
“I have not seen the requirements. They have not been released,” Jackson said in response. “JASSM is a maneuverable weapon [and] with the simple addition of an on-board datalink that could give target position updates…might me a means to addressing moving targets.”
DoD acquisition officials granted the weapon Milestone C status earlier this year, clearing the way for the ER version to enter into low-rate production. Construction of the long-range JASSM is scheduled to begin by the third quarter of 2012, it states.