The Air Force plans to continue building its next nuclear cruise missile, the Long-Range Standoff Weapon (LRSO), with Raytheon [RTN] as the sole-source contractor, according to an April 17 release. The announcement arrives years ahead of an expected down-select.
Both Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have been developing LRSO designs under technology maturation and risk reduction (TMRR) phase contracts, awarded in 2017. Per Friday’s release on the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center’s website, the service decided to focus on Raytheon’s design after completing preliminary design reviews.
“Our competitive TMRR phase … enabled us to select a high-confidence design at this point in the acquisition process,” Maj. Gen. Shaun Morris, Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center commander and program executive officer for strategic systems, said in the release.
The LRSO program, located at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, is exploring redirecting funding to “critical areas” and possibly moving activities that were previously scheduled for the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase into the TMRR phase, such as flight tests.
Raytheon noted in a Monday press release that contract negotiations for the EMD phase, “with a strong focus on schedule realism, affordability, and cost-capability trades,” will start in fiscal 2021. The contract award is anticipated in fiscal 2022, which begins on Oct. 1 of next year.
Per the Air Force’s fiscal year 2021 budget justification documents, a down-select was not expected until mid-2022. However, the service emphasized in its release that the “early off-ramp” of Lockheed Martin from the program was in line with the existing LRSO acquisition strategy.
Elizabeth Thorn, LRSO program manager at the Nuclear Weapons Center, said the announcement was not a down-select “per se.”
“Instead, we are reframing our relationship with Lockheed Martin to focus on specific technology maturation we believe either has future applicability for the final LRSO design or will reduce overall program risk,” she said. The Air Force has not clarified what Lockheed Martin’s role will be moving forward.
