By Marina Malenic
The Pentagon’s multibillion-dollar Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) will not suffer from cost overruns resulting from faulty components discovered in testing last year, the Air Force program manager for the stealthy cruise missile said recently.
JASSM prime contractor Lockheed Martin [LMT] will absorb all costs related to retrofits needed to replace the faulty cables and fuzes, Col. Stephen Demers told sister publication Defense Daily in a Nov. 13 telephone interview. Demers said the four failures in Lot 5 testing were caused by three different problems: an electrical short in a cable that has since been redesigned; a fuze failure, which also resulted in a new component that incorporates process improvements and a design change; and a short in a connector component.
Four JASSM missiles tested in November and January did not detonate on impact, diminishing the program’s reliability to 79 percent, Air Force officials have previously said. The service’s testing reliability goal is set at 90 percent, according to the contractual requirement.
Demers said the current reliability rate, based on incorporation of testing concluded last month, is “somewhere in the high 80s.”
“The models say somewhere from 85 to 89 percent, with potential to grow to 93 percent or higher,” Demers said. He said the program is “on track to be at 90 percent no later than Lot 11.”
Between Sept. 10 and Oct. 4, the Air Force conducted 16 flight tests of Lot 7, 15 of which were successful. Demers said all of the corrective actions that came out of Lot 5 were incorporated into Lot 7.
“This demonstrated that we have produced a quality product, and that has paved way for the Lot 8 contract,” Demers said.
Testing for the missiles being retrofitted has not yet been scheduled, he added.
Demers said the Air Force has also assessed previous JASSM lots to determine whether retrofits will be necessary. He said that, thus far, Lockheed Martin has been asked to make fixes to Lots 5 and 6.
Asked whether opening up the missile for such adjustments would interfere with its low observable characteristics, Demers said that a “process verification program” has determined a methodology for doing so without diminishing the missile’s stealthiness.
Asked whether Australia–JASSM’s only foreign customer to date–has been kept apprised of the missile’s testing difficulties, Demers said Australian officials are “informed every step of the way.”
The Air Force’s fiscal year 2010 budget request included no money for JASSM production. Approximately $82 million was budgeted for repairs, with small amounts also requested for two developmental variants of the weapon.
David Van Buren, the acting Air Force weapons buyer, said in May that the $6 billion program faces termination if Lockheed Martin does not fix problems that have caused the weapon repeatedly to fail to detonate on impact.
Meanwhile, the Air Force is continuing the development process for the JASSM-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) variant. Lockheed Martin holds that development contract as well. JASSM- ER successfully completed its sixth successful flight demonstration in a recent test at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., Demers said.
JASSM is a stealthy, precision cruise missile designed for launch from outside area defenses to kill hard and area-type targets.