Services Need To Pursue A Common Missile, Admiral Says

Defense Daily 06/17/05
author: Geoff Fein

The Navy needs to develop a common direct attack missile that can be shared among the services as well as other joint missile efforts including faster and smaller missiles, according to the director of the Navy's air warfare division.

The Navy needs a follow on to Lockheed Martin's [LMT] Joint Common Missile (JCM), said Rear Adm. Tom Kilcline, director of Air Warfare Division to Defense Daily. However, just exactly what this follow-on missile would look like hasn't yet been determined.

Kilcline said it could be called the Hellfire product improvement program. "Something to follow on, to give helicopters a capability that we can also put on our jets."

Whatever a new joint missile would look like, Kilcline recognizes the need for a joint system. It doesn't make sense, he said, for Army and Navy helicopters to only fire Hellfires and to have Mavericks that can only be fired from airplanes.

"They are all direct attack missiles," Kilcline said. "Into the future, we are going to continue to look at a missile that can by used by all of the services and rotary wing and fixed wing if possible."

The Navy is working on the technology to get there for the motors, the sensors, and the warheads, Kilcline said. "We are working on that right now. We are trying to figure out what it will look like. It won't be JCM, but we've got to get there."

While Pentagon officials targeted JCM for termination, the House Appropriations Committee provided $50 million in its FY '06 Defense Appropriations Bill to continue development of a joint missile, of which $45 million is for research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) for the Army, and $5 million for RDT&E for the Navy.