By Ann Roosevelt
Lockheed Martin [LMT] yesterday said it received a $61 million follow-on low rate production contract for Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) Unitary rockets.
To date, more than 850 GMLRS rockets have been fired in the Global War on Terror.
Work on this contract will be performed at the company’s facilities in Camden, Ark., and Dallas, Texas. The deliveries will begin in May 2010 and conclude in July of that year.
Lockheed Martin expects its first full-rate production contract in early fiscal year 2009, with the first deliveries slated for 2010, a company official said. The GMLRS Unitary entered low-rate production last year (Defense Daily, June 22, 2007).
Under the contract, issued by Army Aviation & Missile Command, deliveries for the order will begin in August 2010 and conclude in March 2011.
“GMLRS delivers precision when warfighters need it most, especially effective in urban areas,” Lt. Col. Drew Clanton, the GMLRS product manager at the U.S. Army’s Precision Fires, Rockets and Missiles program management office in Huntsville, Ala., said in a statement. “The system’s readiness rates support the consistent quality we expect, and its accuracy helps keep civilians out of harm’s way.”
GMLRS provides the Army, Marines and the United Kingdom defense forces with a persistent, responsive, all-weather, rapidly-deployable, long range, surface-to-surface, precision strike weapon. Reliability of U.S. Army GMLRS missions exceeds 98 percent.
“Soldiers continue to tell us how satisfied they are with GMLRS, because it’s ready when it needs to be and can hit precision targets from 85 kilometers away, a new distance record recently recorded at tests at White Sands Missile Range,” Scott Arnold, vice president for Precision Fires and Combat Maneuver Systems at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said. “Just as in previous orders, we are committed to delivering GMLRS to the quality and dependability on which our customers have come to rely.”
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. Lockheed Martin delivered the first 72 GMLRS-Unitary rockets in June 2005, satisfying the requirements of the Urgent Need Statement
GMLRS is an all-weather, precision strike, artillery rocket system that achieves greater range and precision accuracy requiring fewer rockets to defeat targets and limiting collateral damage. GMLRS is a Future Force system that provides the joint Warfighter with immediate, precision fires to engage, destroy and deny terrain to the enemy.
GMLRS also is effective against counter-fire, air defense, light materiel and personnel targets. The system incorporates a GPS-aided inertial guidance package integrated on a product improved rocket body. Additionally, small canards on the guided rocket nose add maneuverability to further enhance the accuracy of the system.
HIMARS can accommodate the entire family of MLRS munitions, including all variants of the GMLRS rocket and Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles. Designed to enable troops to engage and defeat artillery, air defense concentrations, trucks, light armor and personnel carriers, as well as support troop and supply concentrations, HIMARS can move away from the area at high speed following missile launch, well before enemy forces are able to locate the launch site.
Because of its C-130 transportability, HIMARS can be deployed into areas previously inaccessible to heavier launchers and provides a force multiplier to the modular brigade. It also incorporates the self-loading, autonomous features that have made MLRS the premier rocket artillery system in the world. HIMARS carries a single six-pack of MLRS rockets, or one ATACMS missile. HIMARS is in use supporting the Global War on Terror.