Latest news with #TomLaliberty
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Army Stinger missile replacement competition heads into flight tests
RTX and Lockheed Martin are heading into flight tests this year in a head-to-head competition to develop a replacement for the U.S. Army's Stinger missile. The Army is pursuing a Stinger missile replacement for short-range air defense that can go faster, survive jamming and more easily hit tougher targets like drones. The service awarded RTX and Lockheed Martin with contracts to competitively develop the Stinger replacement in September 2023. The RTX-manufactured Stinger missiles are currently used in the Army's interim Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense, or MSHORAD, system and also in a man-portable configuration to provide air defense. The Army has long planned to pursue a next-generation interceptor for short-range air defense, but the effort has become paramount as Stinger missiles were sent to Ukraine in response to Russia's invasion of the country. The service no longer builds new Stinger missiles, but it refurbishes old ones. To replenish its own stockpile, the Army would like to replace the old missiles with new ones. RTX announced it had completed 10 subsystem demonstrations of its Next-Generation Short-Range Interceptor, or NGSRI, offering successfully in a statement Tuesday. 'These successful subsystem demonstrations are a crucial step in meeting the U.S. Army's range and performance requirements for this transformational short-range air defense capability,' Tom Laliberty, the company's president of land & air defense systems, said in the statement. 'We are confident in our ability to rapidly deliver the Army an affordable, low-risk, highly producible NGSRI solution.' Subsystem tests included demonstrating that its advanced seeker's range exceeded that of the current Stinger in laboratory environments and outdoors. The company also proved its flight rocket motor could extend intercept range in engagements. The new system also demonstrated greater range in detecting and identifying aerial targets, even in low-visibility environments and, in arena testing, the new Stinger's warhead showed 'precise and repeatable lethality' against a broad range of threat targets, according to the statement. Other demonstrations 'addressed critical missile functions including tracking, guidance, aerodynamic control, fuzing and safety,' the statement notes. The new missiles will now head to U.S. soldiers and Marines for a touchpoint exercise where they will provide feedback, the company said. A system flight demonstration is also expected to happen later this year, according to the statement. Lockheed Martin told Defense News that since it was awarded a contract to develop a Stinger replacement, it has conducted two soldier touchpoints, 'both of which resulted in positive feedback from the warfighters present,' Randy Crites, vice president of advanced programs for Lockheed Martin's missiles and fire control business, said. Lockheed is preparing for multiple flight tests this year. 'Our solution brings performance improvements to mounted and dismounted MSHORAD operations and provides dismounted soldiers and marines a capability that rivals the mounted platform,' Crites said. Overall, the Stinger competition is expected to take five years to develop and qualify the new interceptor and move into low-rate production, Maj. Gen. Frank Lozano, who runs Program Executive Office Missiles and Space, told Defense News in late 2023 shortly after contracts had been awarded. In the first two years, each of the two companies will develop missiles and then build a 'very small quantity' of them, he said. Then, at the end of the period, the service will have a 'fly-off,' Lozano added. If both missiles perform well, the Army will carry both vendors into the second phase of the rapid prototyping effort. During that phase, the Army will ask the teams to tweak and improve the missiles and build another round of prototypes. The competitors would then go through another fly-off round. After that, the service would select one vendor to move into production. Of course, Lozano said, the Army plans to be flexible. 'If one vendor does very well and the second vendor does very poorly, then we have that decision there at the end of the two-year time period to off-ramp one of the vendors and just proceed with a single vendor for the final three years of the program,' Lozano said. 'We'd really not prefer to do that; we really want to keep that competition as long as possible.'
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Army's Stinger Surface-To-Air Missile Replacement Makes Progress
The U.S. Army's ongoing effort to field a successor to the FIM-92 Stinger man-portable air defense system (MANPADS) has seen a series of successful subsystem demonstrations, with the next step planning to put the system into troops' hands for field evaluation. The latest demonstrations as part of the Army's Next-Generation Short-Range Interceptor program (NGSRI) were carried out by RTX's Raytheon business unit. The need to field a replacement for the aging Stinger has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, which has seen the United States transfer thousands of the older missiles, while the drone threat has continued to grow globally. Raytheon announced today that it had completed all 10 planned subsystem demonstrations for its NGSRI entrant over the past several months. These successful subsystem demonstrations are a crucial step in meeting the U.S. Army's range and performance requirements for this transformational short-range air defense capability,' said Tom Laliberty, president of Land & Air Defense Systems at Raytheon. 'We are confident in our ability to rapidly deliver the Army an affordable, low-risk, highly producible NGSRI solution.' The company provided specific details of four of the subsystems that were looked at. First of these is the seeker assembly, which demonstrated a maximum acquisition range 'far exceeding Stinger in both laboratory and outdoor environments.' Meanwhile, the rocket motor 'demonstrated the ability to extend the intercept range of maneuver short-range air defense engagements.' As for the command launch assembly (CLA) — the man-portable missile launcher interface — this also demonstrated an 'enhanced range for operator detection and identification of aerial targets in real-world, low-visibility environments.' Finally, the warhead, which underwent static arena testing, demonstrated 'precise and repeatable lethality against a broad spectrum of aerial threats.' The remaining six demonstrations addressed other critical functions of the new missile, including tracking, guidance, aerodynamic control, fuzing, and safety. The success of the subsystem demonstrations, Raytheon says, should lead to exercises in which U.S. Army soldiers and Marines will get their hands on NGSRI prototypes and test them in exercises. It seems likely these trials won't involve troops actually firing the missiles — at least, not yet. Raytheon said a first system flight test demonstration is only planned for later this year. A replacement for the venerable Stinger short-range heat-seeking surface-to-air missile has been in the works for some time now, as TWZ has reported in the past, with the original plan being to get a finalized weapon into production no later than the 2027 Fiscal Year. The Army issued a formal request for information (RFI) for the proposed Stinger replacement in March 2022, at which time the program was known as Maneuver Short Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) Increment 3. While other M-SHORAD increments focused on the development of air defense vehicles, Increment 3 was exclusively focused on developing a new missile to replace to that RFI, 'The system must be capable of defeating Rotary Wing (RW) aircraft, Group 2-3 Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), and Fixed Wing (FW) ground attack aircraft with capabilities equal to or greater than the current Stinger missile (with Proximity Fuse capability). The system must provide improved target acquisition with increased lethality and ranges over current capability.' At least some of those performance aspirations look to have been met in the recent subsystem demonstrations. We also know that the Army wants the new missile to be faster than the existing Stinger and more resistant to countermeasures. As well as being soldier-portable, the new missile is designed to be integrated on vehicles, via the existing Stinger Vehicle Universal Launcher (SVUL). This is a four-round launcher used on the M-SHORAD Increment 1 vehicle and the Avenger system, which can be mounted on a Humvee or in a static position. The rendering at the top of this article shows how Raytheon expects the new missile to appear when deployed in M-SHORAD-based and man-portable forms. RTX and Lockheed Martin have both received contracts to competitively develop the Stinger replacement. Speaking in October 2023, Brig. Gen. Frank Lozano, who runs the Program Executive Office Missiles and Space, told Defense News that the service expected to spend the first two years of the program developing the missiles, which would be built in a 'very small quantity.' Then there would be a competitive fly-off, with the possibility that both RTX and Lockheed Martin entrants could progress to the second phase: a rapid prototyping effort. This will see improvements made to the missiles (or missiles) and another round of prototypes. After another fly-off round, if required, the service would look to start low-rate production — sometime before the end of 2028. The original drivers behind fielding a Stinger successor included the determination that the Stinger Reprogrammable Microprocessor (RMP) would become obsolete in Fiscal Year 2023, with the Stinger Block I meanwhile undergoing a life extension to keep it relevant. This upgrade includes the addition of a proximity fuze, making the missile more effective against smaller targets, such as drones. 'We found some ways to buy time in the near term, including, for example, refurbishing older Stinger missiles,' Army acquisition head Douglas Bush said in March 2023, during an online Defense News event. 'We think we'll get at least 1,200 good new Stingers out of that effort, and save a lot of money doing it.' At the same time, the Army's Stinger inventory has been in decline for some time now, with a steady reduction due to normal training and test and evaluation requirements now compounded by the war in Ukraine. This has seen the U.S. military transfer thousands of these missiles to Ukraine, which has an urgent need for air defense equipment. The dwindling missile inventory in the United States across the board has led to broader questions about the feasibility of replenishing these stocks, or surging production if more missiles are required, as you can read more in this previous TWZ piece. As far as Stinger is concerned, the production of all-up missile rounds can no longer be undertaken, with all work now focusing on modernizing existing missiles. All this taken together helped the Army decide to develop a Stinger replacement, although it's still unclear exactly how much of the older Raytheon system might have made its way into that company's NGSRI offering. Meanwhile, the conflict in Ukraine has only further underlined the need for more capable SHORAD capabilities for the U.S. military. In particular, the threat posed by small drones, which is very much a reality now and only continues to grow, has already shown the need for improved SHORAD systems, and in significant numbers. The generally parlous state of the U.S. military's SHORAD enterprise is something we have discussed in this previous TWZ feature. All in all, while many details of the Next-Generation Short-Range Interceptor are still to be revealed, the program is fast-emerging as one of the most important for the U.S. military as it seeks to optimize its short-range air defense capabilities to better meet current and emerging threats. Contact the author: thomas@
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Raytheon's GhostEye perfectly tracks high-speed cruise missile, completes live-fire test
A Waltham-based company has successfully conducted the live-fire test of Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS). The system detected and tracked a high-speed cruise missile and guided a Patriot Advanced Capability-2 (PAC-2) Guidance Enhanced Missile-T (GEM-T) to defend against the surrogate threat, according to Raytheon. The milestone is the latest in a rigorous U.S. Army test program, advancing towards fielding the 360-degree, full-sector radar, according to the company. Tom Laliberty, president of Land and Air Defense Systems at Raytheon, this most recent test represents a significant milestone for both Raytheon and the Army, demonstrating the combat-proven PAC-2 GEM-T interceptor with the transformational LTAMDS radar, a GhostEye family of radars."LTAMDS will further enhance Patriot's unmatched air defense capabilities, helping the Army and customers around the globe defend against increasingly complex threats." LTAMDS has three antenna arrays – a primary array on the front, and two secondary arrays on the back. They work together, detecting and engaging multiple threats from any direction at the same time. The company revealed that this was the latest in a series of LTAMDS live-fire events highlighting the capabilities of the advanced 360-degree radar and its integration with the Army's Integrated Air and Missile Defense LTAMDS program is executing to an aggressive schedule, with multiple radars being utilized for simultaneous testing and integration at various Raytheon and USG test locations, according to the company. Live fire ensures combat-proven effector's performance with LTAMDS, as per Raytheon. Raytheon revealed that tests have increased in complexity to stress the radar and prove its capabilities against real and representative threat sets. Throughout, LTAMDS has met complex objectives and showcased the performance of the radar. The program is expected to achieve Milestone C, the official transition from development to production, in second quarter of FY2025. International interest in LTAMDS is strong, with more than a dozen countries requesting information and receiving briefings, according to the company. In August 2024, Raytheon was awarded a U.S. Army contract valued at more than $2 billion to deliver radars for the U.S. and Poland. With this Foreign Military Sale, Poland is the first international customer to add LTAMDS to their air and missile defense architecture, according to a press release. In January, the company was also awarded a $529 million contract to supply the Netherlands with a Patriot air and missile defense system fire unit and related equipment. This contract supports the replenishment of a Patriot fire unit donated to Ukraine. The direct commercial sales contract includes a single fire unit consisting of a radar, launchers, command and control stations, and other support equipment. Raytheon, which is a leading provider of defense solutions to help the U.S. government and its allies, has developed new technologies and enhanced existing capabilities in integrated air and missile defense, smart weapons, missiles, advanced sensors and radars, interceptors, space-based systems, hypersonics and missile defense across land, air, sea and space.
