The Navy's new anti-ship missile program, being developed under an accelerated acquisition path, has cleared its critical design review, and officials are now preparing to assess whether the weapon is ready to enter initial production later this year.
The service's Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare (OASuW) Increment 1 program office and Lockheed Martin are developing the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) to meet an urgent operational need from U.S. Pacific Command. The missile is expected to be fielded on Air Force B-1B bombers by the end of 2018 and on Navy F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets by the end of 2019. The missile is a modified version of Lockheed's Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range, which has been fielded on Air Force aircraft since 2014.
In June, the Navy's LRASM program office held the critical design review for the missile, and the Navy expects to complete all actions directed from the meeting by the end of July, Capt. Todd Huber, director for the LRASM program, wrote in a July 14 email to Inside Defense.
The next major event in the program is the production readiness review, on track for the first quarter of fiscal year 2017, according to Huber. The production review coincides with "Knowledge Point 4" of the program, which will support the procurement decision for the Air Force's initial missiles, according to budget justification documents. The accelerated project uses a series of knowledge points, rather than the traditional program milestones, to support decisions regarding significant events, according to the budget justification.
"The knowledge points are similar to acquisition milestone reviews, but occur more frequently," the documents state.
A Lockheed spokeswoman confirmed the successful critical design review and said the program is on track.
"Lockheed Martin and the LRASM Deployment Office successfully conducted our planned Critical Design Review last month," company spokeswoman Melissa Hilliard wrote in a July 18 email to Inside Defense. "This review was a key milestone in maturation and fielding of the LRASM system, leading up to the on-schedule Early Operational Capability on the USAF B-1B in 2018 and USN F/A-18E/F in 2019."
A Government Accountability Office report on LRASM found the Navy has leveraged JASSM-ER's design to reduce risk in the accelerated program. The anti-ship missile's design is 88 percent common with JASSM-ER, according to the March 31 report.
But the audit, performed in January, raised questions about the maturity of the critical technologies used in the LRASM program. Only one -- algorithms for electro-optical sensing -- had been demonstrated in a relevant environment, according to GAO. The other five -- a radio frequency sensor, autorouter software, low-altitude control, multi-target track and simultaneous time-of-arrival algorithms -- were deemed immature at the time of GAO's review.
In the July 14 email, Huber said the program anticipates all of LRASM's critical technologies will have achieved Technology Readiness Level 6 (TRL-6) by the end of July.
A technology reaches TRL-6 when it's been tested in a relevant environment, according to a NAVAIR fact sheet on Technology Readiness Levels. Level six "represents a major step up in a technology's demonstrated readiness," the fact sheet states, and "examples include testing a prototype in a high-fidelity laboratory environment or in simulated operational environment."
Senate appropriators, meanwhile, would add $50 million to the Navy's $250 million request for LRASM development in FY-17. The report on the Senate Appropriations Committee's defense spending bill, passed by the full committee on May 26, states: "The Navy recently concluded an updated program cost estimate and [notes] that the Navy's fiscal year 2017 budget request places the OASuW Increment 1 early operational capability fielding schedule at risk by several months."
In order to "meet the shortfall identified by the Navy," the report continues, the committee is adding $50.6 million to the Navy's request for $250 million in FY-17 to continue developing LRASM, while also recommending no funding for the second increment of OASuW "to minimize program risk."
Huber told Inside Defense in the July 14 email that the program is on schedule.
"Integration efforts and flight testing are underway and will continue over the next few years at various contractor and government test sites nationwide to clear LRASM for flight operations," he wrote.
