Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM)

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Lockheed Martin [LMT] on Monday revealed an in-development longer range variant of the AGM-158 cruise missile, the XR.

The new AGM-158 XR is being developed only through internal research and development funding to make a longer-range version of the AGM-158B Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range (JASSM-ER) and the AGM-158 Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), company officials told reporters here during the Air and Space Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber conference.

Michael Rothstein, vice president for strategy and requirements, air weapons and sensors at Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control business unit, highlighted this concept aims to help provide more standoff capability for American forces amid concerns about Chinese capabilities in a conflict and that the longer range missile would end up saving DoD fuel and time to shoot more weapons at the target.

“As you are dropping things at increased standoff range, instead of having to drive farther to your release point, you’re now going back to refuel, rearm and turn your next ordnance. So it helps build operational tempo for the warfighter, because now they can generate more sorties in a day and put more mass across the target if they need to do that with other weapons or other XRs or whatever it may be,” Rothstein said.

He noted that in their calculations the fuel the military would save from shorter fighter aircraft ranges more than makes up for the higher fuel and range capacity of the XR missile, which can then save tanker and aircraft gas for other mission sets.

“Can’t get into the specifics, we’ve done the operational analysis on all of those things: on the ranges and the threat, the tankers – and certainly there’s benefit there to the warfighter that’s very significant,” Rothstein said.

The main change to the missile is increasing its length and weight to hold more fuel. The company was unwilling to provide specific XR ranges due to classification concerns, but Rothstein said “I’m very happy to characterize it as significant. It’s not minor, it is not on the edges.”

The XR missile was purposefully not described solely as a JASSM-XR because it could, conceptually, stand in for the Navy LRASM version. 

Jon Hill, vice president and general manager of air dominance and strike weapons at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, argued the AGM-158 XR leverages the existing cruise missile production line. He noted “what it really does is it stretches the existing JASSM and LRASM family, that outer mold line, to give us more fuel and that buys us the range that the warfighters need.”

Rothstein also argued using a derivative of a weapon already on a hot production line helps “markedly decrease your development costs” along with using preexisting qualified components and subcomponents. Therefore, they can produce the JASSM, LRASM and XR at the same time. 

He noted that while JASSM and its current derivatives have been around for over 20 years, before digital design and engineering came about, Lockheed Martin is still investing in making new missiles like the XR use digital design for changes and upgrades.

“Where can we get more digital? Where can we be more modular as we do that smartly…So that’s really the value proposition, I think, for the warfighters – can we get them the things they need operational that would be good, and do it in a way that’s cost effective in an era where we know budgets are always going to be tight.”

Rothstein also confirmed Lockheed Martin is positioning the AGM-158 XR as another step beyond the next two variants currently in-development: JASSM-D with the Air Force and LRASM C3 with the Navy. The XR indeed looks to be a stretched out version of the JASSM-D, in particular.

“This looks one jump ahead of that, where we’re looking beyond that to that would come next.”

However, he admitted the AGM-158 XR would be too big to use on the F-16 and the larger and heavier weapon will impact the range of the aircraft launching the missile. Still, Rothstein argued those changes are not significant in relation to the larger missile range.

Rothstein said the company and military would have to think through the engineering and operational risk issues for a heaviest weight worst case landing scenarios before handling the XR, especially on an aircraft carrier that could use a version of this in place of an LRASM.

“Your bombers aren’t worried about it, your bigger fighters aren’t worried about it. But an F-18 carrying these things, do you try to land on [an aircraft carrier]?…if this were an LRASM version coming back on the carrier, that’s something they want to think through…That will be a factor that they will want to consider.”

Rothstein said the XR is “several years out still, to be very blunt”  from being fieldable, but Lockheed Martin is conceptually willing to use internal company funds to move into flight testing of prototypes within one to two years, depending on corporate decisions on how to spend the R&D dollars.

Initial analysis showed them the investment needed for testing and production “should be relatively minimal if the services choose to go this way.”

Relatedly, Rothstein provided an update to the production capacity of Lockheed Martin’s Troy, Ala., facility that performs final assembly of these and other missiles.

In 2022 Lockheed opened a second factory in Troy that allowed them to gradually climb to produce 720 combined JASSM and LRASM missiles per year. Before the second Troy factory was ready, the company was building about 550 AGM-158 missiles per year.

Rothstein said the company then examined what it would take to get to maximum capacity at the two factories, if optimized to also work with second and third tier suppliers, and what production levels they could reach.

“What would it take to get the maximum out of the two factories without building up? And we decided that, [after]  doing all that math and assessment, we could get to 1,100. And so over the last few years, we’ve been working with the government, between the U.S. government, certainly  there’s some FMS aspects of this. And so now the whole multi-year… we are really on a plan now, over the next five years, to optimize production at roughly 1,100 missiles a year. Now that’s a function of U.S. government, potential FMS, there’s testing warranty in there, but that’s a sizable capability when just a few years ago, we were at 550.”

He added they are passing the annual 720 missile level, so they are still building up to reaching 1,100 annually.