By Geoff Fein
Raytheon [RTN] recently completed the second of two planned captive flight tests, demonstrating the Non-Line-Of-Sight Launch System’s (NLOS-LS) seeker aboard a Navy helicopter, said a company official.
To date, Raytheon has had three successful controlled test shots, five successful guided test flights and four successful captive test flights, Tom Moody, business development manager, told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“We conducted over 120 runs against various small boats in both stationary and moving scenarios to determine seeker performance against the small boat threat,” Chris Munson, a Raytheon spokesman, told Defense Daily in the same interview.
The helicopter flies the performance boundaries of the missile, Moody added.
NLOS-LS will be a component of the surface warfare mission package for the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).
“It’s a stated requirement…to counter the asymmetrical threat of small boat swarms,” Munson added.
In the captive tests, the NLOS-LS seeker is bolted onto a Navy helicopter to test against various threat scenarios, Moody said.
“We do that to run numerous runs over and over using the same seeker, versus if I put the seeker on a missile I get a one-time shot,” he said. “The guided flight test flight is the seeker combined with the rocket motor aerodynamics. It’s the tactical missile going against the targets and we’ve had five straight successes against targets ranging from 9 kilometers to 19 km.”
NLOS is a joint Army-Navy effort. While the sea service variant is for LCS, the Army’s system is a key component of the Future Combat System.
“It’s a joint program and each service is taking advantage of the other service’s investment, testing, technology, etc., so they are getting bigger bang for their buck,” Moody said.
Raytheon has 10 more missiles to test this year for the Army and two for the Navy, Moody said.
“Then we will go through Milestone C in December and go into LRIP (low rate initial production) sometime [in the] first part of next year,” he added.
‘All these tests get us toward production. And with the Navy flying in the evaluation during captive flight tests, it better positions them to do their live fire tests in the summer timeframe similar to what the Army is doing right now,” Moody said.
All the missile testing is done at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and all the missiles are fired from the Container Launch Unit (CLU), he noted. “It’s the same CLU we use to launch at Army Targets.”
Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Raytheon formed NetFires LLC–a joint venture in which Lockheed Martin builds the CLU and Raytheon makes the Precision Attack Missile (PAM).
“The CLU has 15 missiles and computer and communications systems,” Moody said. “The same CLU that goes to the Army goes to the Navy for the LCS mission module.”
The challenge is having it operate as a system, Moody said.
“It’s not just a missile or launcher or a command and control unit. It’s operating as a system. It’s really getting total system integration and system operation,” he added.
Although the requirement is to put NLOS-LS on LCS, Moody noted there is no reason the system can’t go on other ships.
“Currently we are performing the testing and development for LCS and for the Army,” he said. “We will be looking at other opportunities as they become available.”
As for PAM, Moody added there are other potential uses for that. “That’s in the ‘to be determined.’ Our main focus right now is to get through a successful SDD (system design and development), and get into production.”