U.S. NAVY
Raytheon’s Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) C- 1 is about
to strike a moving ship during the first free-flight test of
the weapon July 26. JSOW is a family of air-to-ground
weapons that employs an integrated Global Positioning
System/inertial navigation system and terminal imaging
infrared seeker, guiding the weapon to the target. JSOW
C- 1 adds moving maritime target capability and the two-
way strike common weapon data link.
Raytheon is proposing a powered version of JSOW,
with a jet engine giving it an extended range — as the
JSOW-ER — up to 300 nautical miles.
“In the future, it’s going to be difficult for an aircraft
to get within 60 miles of next-generation enemy
ships,” Schulte said.
In October 2009, Raytheon demonstrated a JSOW-ER development model with a small Hamilton
Sundstrand turbojet engine developed for the company’s Miniature Air-Launched Decoy that flew to 264
nautical miles. A production JSOW-ER would require
an engine, a fuel bladder and a warhead smaller than
the 1,000-pound warhead on the JSOW C- 1.
Schulte said the 300-pound warhead of the
Maverick missile would be a possibility for the JSOW-ER, avoiding a “probably $20 million” development
program for a new warhead.
“The JSOW is already integrated on F/A- 18 and
JSOW-ER doesn’t change the outer mode line at all,”
Schulte said. “Basically, if JSOW is on the airplane,
JSOW-ER can be integrated on it.”
The Navy already fields a number of types of air-
launched weapons with precision guidance able to home
in on and strike maritime targets at various ranges.
The Boeing-built AGM-84 Harpoon, first deployed on
P-3C maritime patrol aircraft in 1979, remains the Navy’s
standard anti-ship cruise missile. It can be launched
against a ship target at ranges of approximately 60 nautical miles and home in on the target with its radar, but it
cannot obtain target position updates via data link.
Boeing’s AGM-84K Standoff Land-Attack Missile — a
development of the Harpoon — has a data link for midcourse target position updates, an IIR seeker and a range
of more than 150 nautical miles, but requires a person in
the loop for precise aim point control.
The Dual-Mode Laser-Guided Bomb — built by
Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — and the Boeing-built Laser Joint Direct-Attack Munition have a limited
capability against moving targets, Chebi said.
The Raytheon-built AGM-65 Maverick, with a range
of approximately 15 nautical miles, gives P-3C, F/A- 18
and AV-8B aircraft a precision attack capability against
small ships and boats, as demonstrated on March 28
off Libya when a P-3C crew neutralized a Libyan Coast
Guard vessel with a Maverick.
“Maverick is planned to remain in the inventory
beyond 2020 unless they are expended first,” said
Capt. Brian Corey, the Navy’s program manager for
direct and time-sensitive strike weapons.
Navy helicopters are armed with various versions of
the Lockheed Martin-built laser-guided, short-range
AGM-114 Hellfire missile for action against boats and
other targets.
Maverick and Hellfire will be replaced by the fire-and-forget Joint Air-Ground Missile (JAGM), for
which Lockheed Martin and the team of Raytheon
Missile Systems and Boeing Defense, Space and
Security, St. Louis, are competing.
“Both competitors have completed the technology
development phase and have submitted proposals for
follow-on engineering and manufacturing development,” Corey said.
For JAGM, the Raytheon-Boeing team is offering an
uncooled trimode seeker — IIR, semi-active laser and
millimeter wave. Lockheed Martin is proposing a mid-wave cooled trimode seeker.
“The cooled sensor has a good bit more sensitivity
against the threat targets that are defined in the JAGM
requirement and that sensitivity in the trade studies we
did proved to result in about 50 percent more standoff
range when engaging threats with the IR sensor,” said
Frank St. John, vice president of tactical missiles at
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, Orlando,
Fla. “For platform survivability — bringing the air
crews back home alive — we felt that was a significant
plus for the cooled technology.
“We also looked at performance of long wave versus
mid-wave in littoral environments,” St. John said.
“We’re very aware of the fact that for the Marine Corps
and the Navy, a lot of the fight for them takes place in
high-humidity littoral regions [where] the sensitivity
advantage of mid-wave is even greater.”
Raytheon, currently building trimode seekers on a
“hot” production line, favors uncooled IR seekers
