Free Republic

The US Air Force has 140 of its biggest warplanes – its heavy bombers – in active service: 76 Boeing B-52Hs, 44 Boeing B-1Bs and 20 B-2 stealth bombers built by Northrop Grumman. .. Any other air force might content itself with 140 bombers and redistribute the lost bomber’s operating budget. But the US Air Force is counting on the B-1 to play a lead role in a possible air war over the Taiwan Strait. It’s such a high priority that the service is spending millions of dollars recovering, from long-term storage, a surplus B-1 nicknamed “Lancelot” that’s been sitting...

At the Surface Navy Association's (SNA) 2017 National Symposium held last year, Lockheed Martin was showcasing a Mark VI patrol boat scale model fitted with an erectable launcher for four missiles at its stern. This conceptual model was representative of an unmanned Mark VI patrol boat fitted with LRASM next generation anti ship missiles. Conceptual scale model of a Mark VI fitted with 4x LRASM anti-ship missiles on Lockheed Martin stand at SNA 2017 Lockheed Martin representatives told Navy Recognition at the time (SNA 2017), that the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to study the...

A July 2016 test of the LRASM from a MK-41 launcher on the Navy’s Self Defense Test Ship. Lockheed Martin Photo Lockheed Martin has elected not to include its Long Range Anti-Ship Missile in the Navy’s competition to field an over-the-horizon missile for the Littoral Combat Ship and frigate, company officials confirmed to USNI News on Wednesday. “After long and careful consideration, Lockheed Martin has decided to withdraw from the U.S. Navy Over-the-Horizon Weapon System (OTH-WS) competition. As the current OTH-WS request for proposal process refined over time, it became clear that our offering would not be fully valued,” read...

The Navy and Lockheed Martin are looking at developing a variant of the LRASM missile that fires from a deck-launcher on a ship - as opposed to having a weapon that only fires from aircraft and vertical launch tubes. Lockheed Martin is developing a new deck-mounted launcher for the emerging Long Range Anti-Ship Missile engineered to semi-autonomously track and destroy enemy targets at long ranges from both aircraft and surface ships. The weapon, called the LRASM, is a collaborative effort between Lockheed, the Office of Naval Research and the Defense Advanced Project Research Agency, or DARPA. The LRASM, which is...

Lockheed Martin is developing a new deck-mounted launcher for the emerging Long Range Anti-Ship Missile engineered to semi-autonomously track and destroy enemy targets at long ranges from both aircraft and surface ships. The weapon, called the LRASM, is a collaborative effort between Lockheed, the Office of Naval Research and the Defense Advanced Project Research Agency, or DARPA. The LRASM, which is 168-inches long and 2,500 pounds, is currently configured to fire from an Air Force B-1B bomber and Navy F-18 carrier-launched fighter. The current plan is to have the weapon operational on board an Air Force B-1B bomber by 2018...

Contacted by Navy Recognition, a Lockheed Martin spokesperson said "we learned over the weekend that LRASM's official designation will be AGM-158C". AGM-158C is the designation for the air-launched LRASM missile only. There is no surface-launch LRASM program of record yet. The Department of the Navy, Naval Air Warfare Center, gave the official designation. CGI: An AGM-158C LRASM is launched from an F/A-18E Super Hornet We reported last week that the U.S. Navy began initial integration testing of its Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) onto the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet at Patuxent River’s Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23 facility. Based on...

The US Navy has begun integrating Lockheed Martin’s new Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) with its Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and airworthiness flights are due to start next month. The service says its test and evaluation team at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland conducted the first load and fit checks with the weapon this week using a “mass simulator vehicle” – all in preparation for first phase of airworthiness certification. LRASM has already been integrated with the US Air Force’s Boeing B-1B bomber, and now pictures released by the navy show the weight-representative payload attached to a Super Hornet’s...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Raytheon’s Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) will be a likely competitor in the Navy’s search for a next generation anti-ship missile to replace the 1980s era weapons widely in use in the service, the deputy chief of naval operations warfare systems (N9) said Wednesday. Set to start in Fiscal Year 2017, the contest for the Navy’s Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare (OASuW) Increment II seeks to replace the Navy’s decades-old inventory of Boeing RGM-84 Harpoons with more technologically sophisticated weapons. OASuW Increment I — an ongoing program between DARPA and the Navy — is being developed using the Lockheed...

America's primary anti-ship missile, the Harpoon, has been in service now for close to 40 years and the Navy has been very reluctant to evolve when it comes to its anti-ship capabilities. Times are changing, with China's Navy on the rise and Russia flexing its muscle, the Cold War staple just won't do. Enter Lockheed's ninja-like Long Range Anti-Ship Missile to save the day. The Harpoon was once the 'gold standard' of anti-ship cruise missiles, but its subsonic flight profile, limited range, less than stealthy design, and relatively simple targeting and navigation methodology have left it as almost an afterthought...

Lockheed LRASM completes captive carry tests Lockheed Martin says it recently completed a series of captive carry flight tests for a new Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) it is developing for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) over the Point Mugu sea range in California. The new weapon, which is based upon the company's AGM-158B Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) system, is expected to make its first free flight test later this year. mfc-lrasm-pr2-h.jpgMike Fleming, Lockheed's LRASM air launch programme manager, says that the captive carry tests were flown onboard a...

Surface Combat Fleets: Obsolete? By James R. Holmes America is developing its own carrier killer. Defense Industry Daily reports that the U.S. Navy has budgeted some $198 million through 2017 to fund a sorely needed replacement for its swiftly aging RGM-84 Harpoon antiship cruise missile. The workhorse Harpoon is rapidly being overtaken by rivals such as the Indian Navy's supersonic BrahMos, which outranges the American bird by a wide margin. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency started developing a subsonic and a supersonic variant of a long-range antiship cruise missile, or LRASM, in 2009. It subsequently dropped the supersonic LRASM-B...