Lockheed Martin broke ground on an expansion to its cruise missile production facility in Troy, Ala., announced the company. Increased demand for the company’s long-range strike weapons drove the need for the 62,000-square-foot annex, states the company’s Feb. 27 release. The ground-breaking was on that same day. The annex will enlarge the existing 92,000-square-foot Pike County manufacturing plant and, over the next few years, will add 10 percent more full-time employees to the facility’s 400-plus-strong workforce, states the release. The project is slated for completion by spring 2015. Lockheed Martin builds the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile in Troy and also manufactured test articles there for its Long Range Anti-Ship Missile development program. LRASM is a JASSM derivative. “With this expansion, we plan to leverage our mature and reliable cruise missile production experience to offer affordable, low-risk, long-term capability to warfighters,” said Frank St. John, the company’s vice president of tactical missiles.
The United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force has unveiled a new electronic warfare drone designed to fly with fighter jets into contested airspace, including alongside its fleet of F-35s. RAF says it plans to develop models that draw on the U.S. Air Force’s approach of mating unmanned systems with crewed platforms.