By Geoff Fein
Lockheed Martin [LMT] on Aug. 9 completed a successful test flight of its Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM), but a second shot a day later encountered an electro-mechanical issue causing it to over fly the target, according to a company official.
Last Monday’s test confirmed that the airframe modifications Lockheed Martin made to JAGM for safe separation off of a F-18 fighter aircraft were done well, Frank St. John, director for close combat systems, told Defense Daily recently in a telephone interview.
He added that all the aerodynamics, propulsion, and navigation systems checked out and Lockheed Martin’s ability to operate all three sensors simultaneously was also validated.
“We hit within a couple of inches of the aim point on the target board at 16 kilometers [range]. The primary guidance mode there was semi-active laser, but we were running millimeter wave and imaging IR (infrared) sensors simultaneously and getting critical seeker data on that flight,” St. John said. “That flight was a complete success.”
But less than 24 hours later, the company’s second test shot did not go as well, he noted.
“This was a test to check out passive fire-and-forget mode of the weapon. We locked on to the target at a 4 km range, had excellent performance of the IR sensor, both in acquiring and tracking the target as well as outstanding image quality,” St. John said. “We launched the weapon and, unfortunately, shortly after the launch we had an electro- mechanical anomaly in the missile, which caused us to over fly the target slightly.”
Technicians are still evaluating the data from that shot, he added.
“So far, all of our data analysis has confirmed that the sensors operated flawlessly, but we had some sort of failure, electrical in nature, within the system,” St. John said.
The company is discussing scheduling a new test date at White Sands Missile Range, N.M, he added.
St. John said the company believes it has put together a system that gives the customer the best of mature, low-risk, technology, yet meets the operational requirements.
“We have been working on the seeker technology now for about eight years. We’ve evolved that technology through multiple design iterations. Now, we are focusing on manufacturing and cost reduction in that design,” he said.
The tri-mode seeker on Lockheed Martin’s JAGM dates back to seekers the company produced for Javelin, Hellfire and Longbow missiles, St. John added.
“We have produced more than 60,000 of those different seekers. We have a mission success rate in the 95 to 97 percent rate in theater with those seekers, so we think we bring a very mature technology base into the program,” he said.
Besides working with White Sands to secure the next opportunity to fly JAGM, Lockheed Martin is also in the process of integrating their weapon onto a F-18 and scheduling that test program for the fourth quarter 2010, St. John said.
“We’ve also started working the proposal activities. We received the draft RFP (Request For Proposal) earlier in the year, and are expecting the final RFP in the next weeks,” he said. “We think we’ve made excellent progress on the program. All of the customer feedback has been positive.”
Lockheed Martin’s JAGM effort has a team of about 17 suppliers that have been working with the company from the beginning of the Joint Common Missile (JCM) program, St. John noted. “So we have an industry team in place consistently supporting us for about seven years.”
Lockheed Martin partners exclusively with Inglewood, Calif.-based Marvin Engineering. St. John said the company is the Navy’s largest supplier of launchers and ejector racks for fixed-wing aircraft.
“They are also our partner on rotary-wing launchers for the Hellfire system and they are our partner of choice for launcher products on the JAGM program,” he said. “We also have an agreement with Aerojet for the propulsion system. We believe Aerojet has a unique capability to meet the fixed- and rotary-wing propulsion requirements.”
Lockheed Martin is competing against a Boeing [BA]-Raytheon [RTN] team.
JAGM will be carried on rotary-wing, fixed-wing and unmanned aerial system platforms, with an expected initial operational capability in 2016. The missile is expected to replace Hellfire II, Longbow Hellfire and Maverick missiles (Defense Daily, July 27).
The Army and Navy are seeking a combined total of 33,000 JAGMs.