After years of serving as the bill-payer for other Pentagon priorities, munitions stockpiles are poised to get a major boost from the $150 billion reconciliation package unveiled by lawmakers in Congress this week, along with the defense industrial base to...
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control received a $122.6 million installment on an ongoing contract to improve production of the AGM-158 JASSM/LRASM stealth missiles, the Pentagon announced March 14. The weapons have become the key standoff munitions for USAF’s combat air forces.
Lockheed Martin received two Air Force contracts on Sept. 27, together worth $3.56 billion, for production of the AGM-58B Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile and the AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, the Pentagon announced. The contracts include missiles for the Air Force, Navy, and partner nations under ...
The Navy recently launched four AGM-158C-3 Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles at once, in what’s being billed as a “graduation exercise for the latest configuration” of the stealth LRASM. The event follows closely the Air Force beginning multiyear procurement of the joint-service missile.
America’s Pacific forces want more missiles—and a lot of them—according to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s wish list for fiscal 2025. A standout of INDOPACOM’s unfunded priorities list—items not contained in the budget—is the Joint Strike Missile (JSM), an advanced standoff munition being developed for the Air ...
After a long period in which munitions were almost an afterthought and sacrificed to pay for other priorities, the Air Force needs to focus on them in order to have the right “package” of capabilities for future conflicts, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown ...
The Air Force plans to get production of the classified AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile underway this year and will equip its new Collaborative Combat Aircraft with the weapon, senior USAF leaders said at a Senate Armed Services Hearing.
Australia says it won’t buy the B-21 bomber, but Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden said it may still be “on the table” when the program is more mature. Warden also reiterated that the new bomber will fly this year.
Lockheed Martin has opened a second production line to make two of the Pentagon’s most in-demand weapons: the LRASM anti-ship cruise missile and the JASSM-ER air-to-surface variant. Wargames have shown the utility of the missiles in countering a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The problem is that ...
Four years after the National Defense Strategy reset the American military focus from counter-extremism to “Great Power Competition”—and two weeks after the Pentagon’s new NDS named China the pacing threat—the Defense Department is only sluggishly taking concrete steps to change its operating constructs, although the ...
The Air Force is looking for a new, generic weapon, produced by multiple vendors, to affordably attack targets at standoff ranges, with a capability as soon as 2030, according to a service solicitation to the defense industry. The Air Force wants to assess the industrial ...
The Air Force is boosting its munitions buy in fiscal 2023, marking another modest step in the migration away from direct-attack munitions with priority going to standoff capability, such as the AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range series and its variant, the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile.