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ORLANDO - Lockheed Martin has received a contract valued at $243.5 million from the U.S. Air Force for an eighth production lot of the JASSM cruise missile. The award brings the total contracted quantities of the cruise missile to over 1,200.
The Lot 8 contract is for 158 JASSM missiles, along with fuze reliability and parts obsolescence efforts, and provision of test instrumentation kits and system reliability and flight test support. In recent flight tests on B-52 and F-16 aircraft, the stealthy standoff cruise missile proved its reliability and capabilities across a wide variety of targets - including hardened, underground bunkers and air defense systems.
JASSM is a critical weapon for the U.S. Air Force, with eight production lots already under contract toward a total objective of 4,900 JASSM and JASSM-ER (Extended Range) missiles. Lockheed Martin also produces the baseline JASSM for Foreign Military Sale customers. JASSM has been successfully demonstrated on the B-1, B-2, B-52 and F-16 aircraft. Future platforms include the F-15E, F/A-18 and F-35.
A 2,000-pound class weapon with a penetrator/blast fragmentation warhead, JASSM cruises autonomously in adverse weather, day or night, using a state-of-the-art infrared seeker in addition to the anti-jam GPS to find a specific aimpoint on the target. Its stealthy airframe makes it extremely difficult to defeat, says Lockheed Martin.
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