Defence

Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control has carried out an initial flight-test demonstration of a proto­type beyond-visual-range weapons datalink in development for its AGM-158 JASSM cruise missile. The company also confirms that it is studying alternate warheads to widen maritime strike options for the missile including the use of submunitions and for an “agent defeat” payload to destroy chemical and biological weapons stocks.

A total of 21 flights of the L-3 Communications-developed prototype datalink were conducted by Lockheed for Eglin AFB, Florida last November using an airborne missile surrogate equipped with production-standard JASSM control avionics. Flight control was conducted from the Eglin command and control (C2) test facility.

“The C2 test facility provided both valid and invalid retargeting messages and abort commands,” says Lockheed. “The weapon surrogate responded correctly to all commands [and] provided in-flight tracking messages and bomb hit indication data on all test runs.”

The datalink flight trials are a key element of plans to field a maritime-mode version of JASSM in 2010-11. Lockheed and the US Air Force are discussing the formal launch of a JASSM maritime interdiction advanced concept technology demonstration to start in 2007, with full-scale development activities to follow from late 2008. Lockheed says it demonstrated an initial maritime strike capability last April using a Block II Lot 3 missile with GPS guidance to attack a barge anchored in the Gulf of Mexico.

n Lockheed’s “Lighthouse” centre for innovation says it is exploring how the company’s developmental surveilling miniature attack cruise missile and the non-line-of-sight loitering attack munition could be networked using the US global information grid. Experiments last year examined using the weapons as reconnaissance sensors while in transit to pre-assigned targets, and options for dynamic retargeting in urban battlefield conditions.

PETER LA FRANCHI/ORLANDO