Boeing will offer a “derivative” of its original Small Diameter Bomb, company program manager Dan Jaspering said in a teleconference with reporters Tuesday following selection of teams led by Boeing and Raytheon to compete for the SDB II contract. The body of the new version and the warhead will be engineered by Boeing; the multi-mode seeker, to be developed by Lockheed, will include both millimeter wave radar and imaging infrared technology. Even with the space consumed by the new seeker, SDB II must still come in at 250 pounds—warhead and all. The team must also develop a two-way datalink so the pilot can update the target while the weapon is in flight, but it need not use the Link 16 data system, Jaspering said.
The Space Development Agency says it’s on track to issue its next batch of missile warning and tracking satellite contracts this month after those awards were delayed by the Pentagon’s decision to divert funds from the agency to pay troops during this fall’s prolonged government shutdown.
