To Replenish Weapons Used in 'Iraqi Freedom'

Raytheon has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Navy for production of Joint Standoff Weapons (JSOW) to replenish systems expended during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The contracts call for Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson (AZ), to produce JSOW-As to be delivered by July 2005.

"JSOW performed superbly in Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was the weapon of choice for time-sensitive targets. Rapidly replacing those that were expended is high priority for the Navy," said Capt. Dave Dunaway, the Naval Air Systems Command's JSOW program manager.

"We are very pleased to be making a weapon system which is so highly regarded by the war fighter for its ease of use and capability to do the job," said Jon Jones, Raytheon's Strike Weapons vice president. "We have energized the JSOW team to add this supplemental amount on top of our normal production runs in order to refill the Navy inventory with this critical weapon as soon as possible."

JSOW is a joint Navy and Air Force program. It is a family of low-cost, air-to-ground weapons that employ an integrated Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation system that guides the weapon to the target. More than 400 JSOW-As have been used in combat operations to date.

The JSOW family uses a common and modular weapon body capable of carrying various payloads. Its long standoff range, greater than 63 nautical miles, allows delivery from well outside the lethal range of most enemy air defenses. The AGM-154A (also called JSOW-A) variant dispenses BLU-97 combined-effect bomblets for use against soft and area targets. It is produced for use on the F/A-18, F-16, F-15E, B-1, B-2 and B-52 aircraft. The AGM-154C, or JSOW-C, variant incorporates an imaging infrared seeker for high precision and a Broach multi-stage warhead which has both a blast-fragmentation and hard target penetration capability for use against point targets. JSOW-C entered low-rate initial production in June. It is currently being produced for Navy F/A-18s and has been selected by Poland for use on its F-16s. The contract is valued at $55 million.

FMI: www.raytheon.com