Both Raytheon [RTN] and Lockheed Martin [LMT] recently turned in proposals emphasizing risk reduction for the Joint-Air-To- Ground-Missile (JAGM) engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase.
The JAGM competition is for a next-generation air-to-surface guided missile to replace the currently fielded Airborne TOW, Maverick and Hellfire missiles for the Army, Navy and Marine Corps.
“In this acquisition environment, our customer is very sensitive to technical risk, schedule risk, cost risk, all of those areas, so the proposal we submitted has a strong emphasis on building on mature technologies,” Frank St. John, vice president of Tactical Missiles at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said in a teleconference.
In most cases, the technologies used in JAGM are fielded, he said. Integrating those mature technologies, reducing risk, that provides the military fully compliant JAGM weapon system.
Addressing cost but without providing detail, St. John said, “we are very confident in our ability to produce the JAGM weapon system at an affordable price point for the government.”
St. John said Lockheed Martin has a history of controlling missile cost on programs like Javelin, Longbow Hellfire, and the Hellfire missile program and company officials believe their JAGM offering is consistent with its ability to control such costs.
Investing its own funds, Locked Martin has continued efforts to drive down risk. Those efforts include a series of subsystem tests, including using its cooled tri-mode seeker in a high-speed captive flight tests earlier this month against maritime targets, including a Revenge Advanced Composites (RAC) low-signature, high-speed patrol craft. The seeker successfully acquired and tracked multiple moving ships, including the RAC, demonstrating superior performance in the high-humidity environment. The RAC made evasive maneuvers against the seeker, mounted in the nose section of a Sabreliner Series 60 jet aircraft.
Such testing was not required by the JAGM Technology Demonstration phase, which recently ended but is part of the upcoming JAGM EMD phase.
“We’re probably about a year in advance of when those tests would take place during the EMD development program,” St. John said. “We believe we’ve demonstrated a significant capability that not only shows the capability against that target, but we also believe differentiates our seeker design and performance from that of our competition.”
The Raytheon-Boeing JAGM effort has been pursuing tests on its single rocket motor for EMD. Designed by Boeing and ATK [ATK], in May the motors completed a series of government-funded tests and met all test objectives after being subjected to various heating and cooling cycles of minus 45 degrees to 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
“These tests of our engineering and manufacturing development rocket engine validated our simulations and proved the maturity of the Raytheon-Boeing JAGM single rocket motor solution,” said Carl Avila, director of Boeing’s Advanced Weapons and Missile Systems, in a statement.
In October 2010, Raytheon used its own funds on a flight test of the motor, which met all primary objectives including updating the flight control software and providing data to incorporate into the simulation software, the company said at the time.