The pace at which Lockheed Martin [LMT] and an industry-government team went from contract award to a successful flight-test last December of a missile defense system based on Guam in less than two years is “unprecedented,” according to a company executive.
The first flight-test of the Missile Defense Agency’s Defense of Guam system employing Lockheed Martin’s AN/TPY-6 radar, MK 41 Vertical Launch System, and the RTX [RTX] Standard Missile-3 Block IIA that intercepted a medium range ballistic missile target was “the biggest accomplishment for our business last year and we had many accomplishments,” Paul Lemmo, president of the Integrated Warfare Systems and Sensors (IWSS) business line, told Defense Daily on Wednesday.
In addition to a successful intercept, the Flight Experimentation Mission (FEM)-02 test from Andersen AFB, Guam, also showcased the first use of the AN/TPY-6 for end-to-end tracking during a live ballistic missile flight-test (Defense Daily, Dec. 10, 2024).
When Lockheed Martin received the contract for its Aegis Guam System, the location in Guam was a dirt field, and once the company began delivering equipment last summer, it only took four months to integrate, test, fire the missile and intercept the target, Lemmo said.
The radar used for the FEM-02 test is a derivative of Lockheed Martin’s Long-Range Discrimination Radar fielded at Clear Space Force Station, Alaska, to provide long-range search and track of all ballistic missile classes, and support to space domain awareness through monitoring of satellites, and other objects and debris.
For the Aegis Guam System, a single panel is being used for detecting missiles at long-ranges. Lemmo said two more “faces” could be added to the system to provide 360-degree missile detection and tracking coverage from Guam.
Congress in the recent fiscal year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act directs U.S. Indo-Pacific Command in the next few months to submit a plan for covering ballistic missile threats against Guam from China and North Korea. If the government makes the decision that it wants 360-degree coverage from the AN-TYP-6 radar, Lemmo said most of the cost has already been sunk in the currently installed system and that, while adding two more panels is “not an insignificant amount,” the cost would not be three times what has already been spent, he said.
The Army has the lead for Defense of Guam and is still defining the architecture for the system. Lemmo said that Lockheed Martin’s Aegis Guam System remains on the Pacific island and will “remain there for the foreseeable future” providing and operational capability.