ST. LOUIS—Boeing [BA] expects production of the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) to remain relatively stable despite the end of the war in Iraq and the upcoming withdrawal from Afghanistan, a company official said.
The Boeing’s factory for the JDAM guidance kit currently produces about 42 JDAMs daily, with work split between JDAMS and Small Diameter Bombs (SDBs). Kristin Robertson, Boeing’s director for Direct Attack Munitions, said the production facility has the flexibility to adapt to changes in the numbers of JDAMs ordered by the Pentagon.
“Currently it’s fairly stable. Beyond that, nobody can predict,” Robertson said.
JDAMs are among the most widely used airborne munitions by the U.S. military and were prominently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Since JDAMs came on-line in 1998, Boeing has sold more than 230,000 GPS guidance kits to the Pentagon and U.S. allies.
The kits are attached to “dumb” munitions so they can be precisely guided to ground targets by satellite furnished coordinates, effectively making them “smart.”
The Pentagon plans to buy 5,000 guidance kits in 2012 for a price tag of $111 million, keeping pace with the 12,500 over three orders in 2011 at a combined cost of $306 million.
Robertson emphasized the Pentagon has no plans to stop producing JDAMs, noting that the government recently issued a “sources sought” notification that will add five more production runs to the current plans, the equivalent of about five years of work.
Robertson said international sales for JDAMs, which features 500- and 2,000-pound versions, will also help keep production going, and the company is also developing a new version of JDAM with wing kits that will effectively triple the range of the bombs once dropped to 40 miles. Australia has been committed to the 500-pound extended range JDAM, while a second country she would not name has shown interest in the larger extended-range munitions.