TSAMTO, July 7. The US Department of Defense announced that the US Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center has signed a contract with Raytheon for the implementation of the engineering development and preparation for mass production (EMD) of the advanced long-range LRSO missile defense system.
The LRSO (Long Range Standoff) air-launched cruise missile is supposed to be used outside the range of enemy air defense systems.
The value of the agreement (including all options) is about $ 2 billion. The work will be carried out at the enterprise in Tucson (Arizona) and is expected to be completed in February 2027. At the EMD stage, the company will continue to fine-tune the production process, and the production environment will be transferred to the ready state of the pilot line. The aim of the EMD stage is to prepare and demonstrate full readiness for the production of missiles.
The announcement of the contract was published a year after the US Air Force Command announced in April 2020 that it would continue the project with Raytheon as the "sole contractor" at the stage of technology refinement and risk Reduction (Technical Maturation and Risk Reduction – TMRR).
As reported by TSAMTO, in August 2017, the Center for Nuclear Weapons of the US Air Force concluded contracts with the American companies Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to finalize technologies for creating a promising long-range missile defense system LRSO. Each company received $ 900 million to perform work at the TMRR stage. The work was supposed to be completed by 2022, after which the project will move to the stage of engineering development and preparation for mass production. At this stage of the project, the contract was supposed to be signed with one of the two companies.
As a result, having conducted a comprehensive assessment of the approaches of competing companies by April 2020 during the defense of the draft design at the TMRR stage, the Air Force command decided ahead of schedule to choose Raytheon to continue the work. Cooperation with Lockheed Martin was supposed to continue in the direction of improving individual technologies that can be applied in the design of the LRSO in the future. Although the agreement with Raytheon for the implementation of the TMRR stage will last until the beginning of 2022, the Air Force command expressed confidence in the successful completion of the company's development of a promising missile. It is planned that the first flight of the KRVB LRSO will take place in 2022.
It is assumed that in 2030, the LRSO equipped with a nuclear warhead will replace the AGM-86B (ALCM – air launched cruise missile) of Boeing, which has been in service since 1986. The new KRVB is being created for the purpose of using the existing B-52 strategic bombers, as well as the promising B-21 bomber, on board. The requirements for the LRSO missile are classified, but it is assumed that a long-range munition with high survivability will ensure the defeat of strategic targets deep in enemy territory at a distance of more than 1,500 miles in the presence of an integrated air defense system. It will become one of the means of strategic deterrence of the next generation and will expand the potential of the US Air Force to launch a global strike.
The draft budget of the US Defense Ministry for 2022 f.g. provides for the allocation of $ 609 million for the implementation of the program. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2017 that the cost of the program for the production of 1000 LRSO missiles at $ 10 million per unit would be about $ 10 billion, but, according to the Arms Control Association, the cost could grow to $ 20 billion.
