The US Army is set to award Lockheed Martin with an enhanced technology maturation risk reduction (E-TMRR) contract for its Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) prototyping effort after Raytheon exited the competition.
In March, Jane’s first reported that the army has opted not to fund Raytheon’s entry into the next phase of the prototyping competition after the company was not able to conduct a flight test of its DeepStrike missile due to “technical issues”. Lockheed Martin, however, conducted two flight tests with its PrSM bid and will be award with an E-TMRR contract “in a few weeks”, the army told Jane’s on 1 April.
Under this new contract, the company will “continue to mature the missile design and perform additional flight tests to support the fiscal year 2023 urgent material release”, the service added.
Lockheed Martin is slated to conduct a third flight test on 30 April, and under the new contract it will conduct engineering development tests between October and June 2021.
“Upon completion of E-TMRR phase, the programme will enter the engineering manufacturing development phase, [in] roughly the second or third quarters of fiscal year 2021,” the army wrote. “The programme is on schedule to field 30 PrSMs under an [urgent material release] in the third quarter fiscal year 2023.”
Lockheed Martin is set to move in to the next phase of development for the US Army’s Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) programme. This follows two flight tests including the missile’s inaugural flight in December 2019, shown here. (US Army)
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