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DoD approves joint air-to-surface missile

The U.S. Defense Department has given the go-ahead to the Air Force’s Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), officials announced May 2, after more than a year of deliberating and rehabilitating the program with contractor Lockheed Martin.

The chief weapon buyer for the Pentagon, John Young, certified that required conditions had been met for the now-$6.1 billion cruise missile program.

In June, the Air Force plans to award the Lot 7 contract for about 115 JASSM missiles, and development-and-testing activities for the extended-range version are scheduled to resume, according to a statement from the air service.

The Pentagon had long deferred a decision on JASSM, a first for a major program in breach of the Nunn-McCurdy statute, after the program tripped the federal cost inflation caps for a second time last April. Though a $68 million plan to kick the troubled program back into shape was approved by outgoing Pentagon acquisition executive Ken Krieg last July, whether the stealthy air-to-ground missile could get back on track and be recertified remained in question. The Air Force even went so far as to issue a request for information on alternatives for JASSM last fall.

Though no new funds could be allocated without the program being recertified, already-appropriated funds were not frozen. JASSM got $156.5 million in the 2007 budget and another $160 million in fiscal 2008. The president’s fiscal 2009 budget proposal includes $240.3 million for the missile program. The $68 million cost of rehabbing the program was split between the Lockheed and the Air Force.

JASSM is designed to cruise autonomously, use an infrared seeker and an improved anti-jam GPS receiver to find its target, and use its stealthy airframe to elude air defenses.

The JASSM program began in 1998 with a plan to buy 2,400 missiles with a 200-nautical-mile range. Since then, the Air Force has added 2,500 extended-range versions of the missile to the order. The service already has 600 of the missiles and another 400 on order.

Costs rose as the Air Force changed requirements — upping the range to 500 miles and adding the Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module to protect the GPS signal sent to the missiles. It is that protective module that was blamed for the series of failed 2007 tests in which three of four missiles lost contact with GPS satellites and missed their targets by more than 200 miles. The fourth reached the target but did not detonate due to fuse problems.