By Ann Roosevelt
Lockheed Martin [LMT] July 20 received a $462.9 million contract to produce Guided Multiple Rocket Systems (GMLRS) Unitary for the United States, foreign allies and foreign military sales (FMS) customers.
GMLRS Unitary provides the Army, Marines and foreign defense forces with a persistent, responsive, all-weather, rapidly-deployable, long range, surface-to-surface, precision strike weapon.
GMLRS-Unitary is the newest variant in the family of rockets leveraging the company’s experience and investment to integrate a unitary warhead with a multi-mode fuze to expand the MLRS target set to include point targets within urban and complex environments.
In January 2005, the Army issued an Urgent Need Statement for acceleration of GMLRS-Unitary deliveries in support of counter fire operations (Defense Daily, June 22, 2007).
The firm-fixed price and cost-plus fixed-fee contract for the full-rate production V procurement is to acquire 4,770 unitary and 530 reduced range rocket pods (RRPR).
There are six GMLRS in a pod. The RRPR reuses the pods of older versions of the rockets, and in some cases the motor of the older rocket is assessed, analyzed and reused if possible–known as download/demate.
Under the contract, the U.S. Army will acquire 532 unitary pods, three stockpile reliability program pods and 18 unitary production validation test rockets. The Marines will acquire 98 unitary pods.
Allies receiving the rockets include Germany, which will acquire 20 unitary pods, the United Kingdom, 72 unitary pods, and France, 43 unitary pods. Under a FMS, Jordan will acquire 24 unitary pods.
Under the RRPR procurement, the Army will buy 344 pods; Marines, 120 pods; United Arab Emirates (UAE), 30 pods; and Jordan, 36 pods.
Downloads/demate rocket pods are as follows: Army unitary, 538 pods; Army RRPR, 344 pods; Army 2009 supplemental, 118 pods; Marine Corps supplemental, 74 pods; Marines, 98 pods; Marine Corps RRPR, 120 pods; Germany unitary, 20 pods; United Kingdom unitary, 72 pods; France unitary, 43 pods; Jordan unitary, 24 pods; UAE RRPR, 30 pods; and Jordan RRPR, 36 pods.
Additional requirements supporting production deliveries include: integrated logistic support; support work for France; and GMLRS technical publications. Jordan will also receive GMLRS multiple launch rocket system family of munitions spares and other support.
The work will be done in Dallas, Texas, and Camden, Ark., and is expected to be completed by June 30, 2013.