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Navy Could Extend Life of Amphibs to 50 Years, LCS for 35, If Navy Invests in their Upkeep
now this is ... amazing way how to grow in power
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The Navy could keep its amphibious ships in service for more than 50 years and its Littoral Combat Ships for up to 35 years, as the service looks for ways to increase the size of the fleet in the nearer term by extending the life of today’s ships, according to Naval Sea Systems Command.

NAVSEA Commander Vice Adm. Tom Moore said the Navy would not reach its goal of having 355 ships until 2052 if it got rid of in-service ships at the usual pace and relied on increasing the pace of new shipbuilding to grow the fleet. If all of today’s ships remain in service longer, though, the Navy could be operating a 355-ship fleet by 2032 – a full two decades sooner.

“If you want to keep all the classes out to as long as you can keep them – and there’s cost associated with that – we think we can get to 355 now in the early 2030s, 2032 to 2035. That’s a significant improvement, and it’s something that we’re looking at pretty seriously,” Moore said while speaking at the American Society of Naval Engineers’ annual Technology, Systems and Ships event.
“The budget that just came out
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, and the Navy’s taking a serious look at do we want to keep the other ships around, in particular the DDGs, going forward.”

Vice Adm. Bill Merz, the deputy chief of naval operations for warfare systems (OPNAV N9), already
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, instead of the planned 35. But Moore said that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

According to a memo Moore wrote to Merz in late April, Wasp-class amphibious assault ships could be extended from 40 years to between 46 and 53 years, San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks could be extended from 40 to between 47 and 53 years, Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships could be extended from 40 to between 45 to 52 years, Littoral Combat Ships could be extended from 25 years to between 32 and 35 years, Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ships could be extended from 40 to 50 years, and more.

The blog Cdr. Salamander
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.

“The bottom line is, if you’re willing to do the maintenance, from a naval architecture standpoint… we can manage all that. So I’m not worried about the service life of it,” Moore said.
“I’m more focused on the combat systems side of it, but I believe in this era of open architecture, Aegis, vertical launch systems, that the combat system can maintain its relevance for a long period of time. That was not the case when I was a young officer serving on a DDG-2 Adams-class destroyer. … The opportunity is there, and I think we’re going to work on that.”

Merz told USNI News in April that the Navy keeping all its destroyers around until 45 years of service would get the fleet to 355 ships by 2036 or 2037, though it would be a destroyer-heavy mix of ships compared to the Navy’s ideal composition of a 355-ship fleet. In particular, that fleet would be lacking attack submarines and some amphibious ships compared to the Navy’s stated need.

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, though the SSNs have to be extended on a hull-by-hull basis instead of the class-wide extension the Navy agreed to on the DDGs. Due to strict engineering requirements to submerge, those hulls must be in very good shape; and due to the need to refuel the SSNs after their planned service life, and the Navy having only five spare reactor cores to devote to SSN life extensions, only up to five could be extended.

On the amphib side, Moore told USNI News he was confident they could serve in the fleet for 50 years or more, though top Navy leadership has not publicly committed to extending their service life the way it did for the DDGs.

“We sell our FFGs to other countries and they keep them for another 20 years. We keep carriers, Enterprise, around for 52, 53. And we’re going to look at service-life extensions for Nimitz-class [aircraft carriers]; Congress asked us to do that. So from an HM&E standpoint, steel hulls, we know a lot about them and we’re pretty confident we can operate them for the intervals we gave to the Pentagon,” Moore said after his speech.
 
"flexibility" three times in five paragraphs of
Upgrading US Navy ships is difficult and expensive. Change is coming.
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The Navy is looking at extending the life of its surface ships
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, meaning some ships might be 53 years old when they leave the fleet.

Here’s the main problem: Keeping their combat systems relevant.

The way the Navy’s front-line combatants – cruisers and destroyers – are incredibly expensive to upgrade, in part because you have to cut the ship open and remove fixtures intended to be permanent when they were installed. When the Navy put Baseline 9 on the cruiser Normandy a few years ago, which included all new consoles, displays and computer servers in addition to the software,
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.

Now, the capability and function of the new Baseline 9 suite on Normandy is staggering. The cost of doing that to all the legacy cruisers and destroyers in the fleet would be equally staggering: it would cost billions.

So, why is that? Why are the most advanced ships on the planet so difficult to keep relevant? And if the pace of change is picking up, how can the Navy stay relevant in the future without breaking the national piggy bank?

Capt. Mark Vandroff, the current commanding officer of Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division and former Arleigh Burke-class destroyer program manager, understands this issue better than most. At this week’s American Society of Naval Engineer symposium, Vandroff described why its so darn hard to upgrade the old ships and how future designs will do better.

Here’s what Vandroff had to say:

“Flexibility is a requirement that historically we haven’t valued and we haven’t valued it for very good reasons: It wasn’t important.

“When you think of a ship that was designed in the 70s and built in the 80s, we didn’t realize how fast and how much technology was going to change. We could have said, ‘You know what, I’m going to have everything bolted.’ Bolt down the consoles in CIC, bolt in the [vertical launch system] launchers – all of it bolted so that we could more easily pop out and remove and switch out.

“The problem was we didn’t value that back then. We were told to value survivability and density because we were trying to pack maximum capability into the space that we have. That’s why you have what you have with the DDG-51 today. And they are hard to modernize because we valued survivability and packing the maximum capability into the minimum space. And we achieved that because that was the requirement at the time.

“I would argue that now as we look at requirements for future ships, flexibility is a priority. You are going to have to balance it. What if I have to bolt stuff down? Well, either we are going to give up some of my survivability standards or I’m going to take up more space to have the equivalent standards with an different kind of mounting system, for example. And that is going to generate a new set of requirements – it’s going to drive design in different directions than it went before.

“I suppose you could accuse the ship designers in the 1980s of failure to foresee the future but that’s all of us. And the point is they did what they were told to do.Flexibility is what we want now, and I think you will see it drive design from this point forward because it is now something we are forced to value.”
 
sounds like a commercial, but since I've now read it, I post
Why the US Air Force should choose the A-29 in the light-attack experiment
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:

The U.S. Air Force this summer is edging closer to the potential procurement of an innovative
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. For the safety of our combat troops and the overall strategic power of our military forces, this addition to our combat capabilities cannot come fast enough.

The recent report on the U.S. service members killed in Niger last October illustrates the current challenge: Our armed forces need to provide nearly continuous combat aircraft support ― in often remote regions of the world ― without wearing out our technologically advanced aircraft needed for near-peer future fights.

For almost 17 years, the Air Force has provided consistent combat-support operations against terrorists by using advanced fourth- and fifth-generation aircraft that are expensive to fly and maintain. Following a recent mission in Afghanistan involving a fifth-generation stealth tactical fighter, a journalist asked: “Is it really necessary to use a plane that costs nearly $70,000 per hour to bomb an undefended drug factory?”

For now, the Air Force relies on high-end, expensive aircraft such as the F-35 and F-22 that should be saved for potential future fights against technologically advanced adversaries. For this other “low end“ fight, the U.S. Air Force needs an aircraft that is inexpensive to operate, easy to maintain, and can work close to the front lines in very rough environments and far from improved infrastructure. Optimally, it needs an OA-X light-attack, survivable, combat-ready, technologically advanced attack and reconnaissance aircraft that will provide our war fighters the combat air cover they need, but at a lower cost.

Because time is of the essence and national security is at stake, Air Force leaders have wisely decided that they will not pursue the same old-style, slow procurement process, spending years to determine what is optimal and then taking additional years and many millions of dollars to develop a new aircraft. As Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson stated, the nation has to “get capabilities to airmen who need them today and can’t wait two to three years for the normal acquisition process.”


Instead, the Air Force is taking existing, commercially developed, off-the-shelf combat and light-attack reconnaissance aircraft and experimenting with them in real-world conditions. This light-attack experiment is a test to see whether the Air Force can get the capabilities it needs more quickly and efficiently by making use of commercial, off-the-shelf technology.

The cost savings to the nation of deploying these aircraft would be significant: The amount of fuel it takes to keep a light-attack aircraft in the air for an hour with weapons aboard is the amount the F-15E Strike Eagle uses taxiing down the runway in six minutes.

One of the aircraft that is being evaluated — the A-29 Super Tucano ― is built in Jacksonville, Florida. It is already in combat operations in Afghanistan,
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and more than 10 other allied countries around the world.

A U.S. armed forces commander stated that the A-29 combat missions in Afghanistan have been a “game-changer.”

The A-29 should be the clear choice for the Air Force. The A-29 has repeatedly proven itself, flying thousands of combat missions, accruing more than 300,000 flying hours, 40,000 of those in combat, employing weapons ― including laser-guided bombs ― against Taliban fighters and other terrorist groups. Since the A-29 is in production in Florida today for our allies, it would require little time to deploy for U.S. troops.

I support the Air Force in its innovative effort to get our war fighters what they require to succeed. This light-attack program offers a solution that protects our troops, defeats our enemies and saves our technologically advanced aircraft for the fight for which they are built.

If the Air Force wants to save money — and lives — by quickly deploying a low-cost, combat-proven aircraft that is more cost-effective against terrorists and militants than our high-end aircraft, then we should expedite the light-attack experiment and acquire the A-29 as expeditiously as possible.
 
wondering if serious
Work: U.S. at Risk of Losing Military Technology Edge to China in Two Years
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The United States will lose its military technological superiority to China in two years if it does not put its $700 billion defense budget into areas that really matter, like artificial intelligence, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former deputy secretary of defense warned on Thursday.

“We should be prepared to be surprised” in any conflict with China, not only because it has invested heavily in modernizing its armed forces but also how it has invested in next-generation military technology, said former Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work speaking at a forum sponsored by the Center for a New American Security.

To show how serious Beijing is, Work said Chinese President Xi Jinping set down a marker for his military to be able to successfully invade Taiwan by 2020 and 10 years after to that be the world’s leader in artificial intelligence.

China “wants to be a first mover” in A.I., incorporating the Internet of things, big data, robotics and machine learning. “That will be how they will get ahead of the United States,” Work said.

For its part, the Pentagon needs to invest in research and development that would give the United States an asymmetric advantage in any potential conflict with Russia and China, Air Force Gen. Paul Selva said later at the same event.

“I’m not countering what they’re doing. I’m going around it,” Selva said.

Beijing’s defense spending rose 620 percent from then until 2015 and continues to rise. Work said the emphasis initially was on systems that could target with precision and have them become increasingly effective over longer ranges. Beijing and Moscow saw great advantages in putting money into ballistic missiles over heavily investing in all the necessary components of a global air force, especially maintenance and logistics to keep the United States at a distance or make it pay a high price for closing.

Both Russia and China also spent money on how to “duel” American battle networks with the aim to “cripple an enemy’s operational systems [and the] internal links” that could launch a concerted, concentrated attack or response, Work said.

He said for the Chinese, their progress is evident in electronic warfare, cyber, counter-space systems, hypersonic and rail-guns.

“Attack effectively fast” and in salvos, pre-emptively to overwhelm defenses, he said. The Chinese “are looking deep and shooting deep.”

Work said there were five reinforcing legs to this build-up, starting with state-sponsored industrial and technological espionage that continues today, now often in targeting sensor technology where the United States still has an edge.

To leapfrog ahead of the United States militarily, Selva said the Chinese have been pursuing a strategy of “learning, buying and stealing” from American and foreign companies, thus avoiding research costs and putting that money to use elsewhere.

Where the Chinese found they lagged behind, Work added they applied themselves “to close that technological gap [and] do it as quickly as they could.” The desired end-strength “is outright technological superiority” across the board.

Work said in his address the new national security strategy was correct in identifying China and Russia as major competitors. “This race is one we have to win,” he said.
 
Dec 23, 2017
Thursday at 3:47 PM
I've been following here so called B-52 engines replacement story; the last part:
Dec 3, 2017
while Now The Air Force Wants New Engines For Its B-52s That Burn 40 Percent Less Fuel
December 20, 2017
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...
... and Air Force solidifies options for B-52 engine replacement
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partly related:
USAF proposes MOAB-sized bomb carriage for B-52H wings

22 June, 2018
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In addition to making the Boeing B-52H more fuel efficient and sophisticated, the US Air Force’s ongoing makeover project also aims to make the pride of Gen Curtis LeMay’s Cold War-era bomber fleet more destructive.

A market survey opened on 21 June reveals the USAF’s plan to equip the B-52H wing pylon to carry a single weapon weighing up to the 9,070kg (20,000lb) class, which potentially includes the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB).

The B-52H now has the ability to carry heavy weapons, including the 13,600kg-class Massive Ordnance Penetrator, internally. But the the Improved Common Pylon on the B-52H wings are limited to carrying weapons weighing up to 2,270kg (5,000lb).

“There wasn't a requirement nor did anyone foresee a need to carry weapons heavier than 5,000lb,” the market survey released by the USAF states.

“With current heavy weapons exceeding 5,000lb there is a new requirement for a replacement external carriage pylon assembly to facilitate these and other emerging needs,” the document adds.

The USAF hasn’t identified a schedule for launching development of the new pylon, but plans to move quickly once the contract is awarded.

The B-52 system programme office is considering a plan to award a cost-plus-fixed-fee-type contract for prototypes and production, with a three- to six-year period for engineering manufacturing and development.

LeMay originally envisioned replacing B-52s with a fleet of supersonic bombers, but the subsonic, long-range H-model has persisted since it entered the fleet in 1961.

Instead of transitioning to retirement, the USAF now plans continue operating the fleet until they reach nearly the century-mark in 2060.

In addition to connectivity and networking upgrades, the USAF plans to re-engine the Pratt & Whitney TF33 turbofans with modern eight modern engines for each aircraft.
 
moving it from
Aircraft Carriers III Jun 17, 2018
in both threads just colorful pictures appear to be of interest anyway, LOL

... related:
The US Navy is fed up with ballistic missile defense patrols

7 hours ago
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now As threats mount, US Navy grapples with costly ballistic missile defense mission
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Tensions on the
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were at an all-time high.

North Korea was preparing to launch seven ballistic missiles, aiming for major advances in its long-range strike capabilities. The Japanese government was furious, and intelligence was warning that the North Korean government was preparing a nuclear test. Military strikes or even war, it seemed, was a distinct possibility.

And war it might have been if the U.S. hadn’t already been bogged down with 140,000 troops
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in a war that was spinning out of control in the wake of the bombing of a holy Shia mosque in Samarra at the hands of Sunni militants.

With the Bush administration staring a massive policy disaster in the face, the country wasn’t going to stomach even the potential for a major conflict with North Korea.

So instead the Bush administration turned to the Navy. During the July 2006 crisis, a budding capability in the fleet’s surface force was brought to bear in a real-world threat environment for everyone to see. Sea-based ballistic missile defense was still in its infancy ― the destroyer Curtis Wilbur had performed the world’s first ballistic missile defense patrol in 2004. But with North Korea’s tests looming, newly upgraded destroyers were dispatched to patrol the Sea of Japan, waiting for then-North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to make his move.

It seemed, at the time, like a major victory for the surface fleet. In the nation’s time of need, with air and ground forces bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, Aegis destroyers built to employ Cold War-era technologies designed to defeat the Soviet air threat had landed on a new mission that would justify the lavish expense of maintaining the world’s most advanced fleet for years to come.

But today, the world is different.

Twelve years since the 2006 crisis on the Korean Peninsula, the ballistic missile defense, or BMD, threat has multiplied just as the Pentagon predicted it would ― but other threats have also cropped up. The threats from a resurgent Russia and rising China ― which
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like it’s preparing for war ― have put enormous pressure on the now-aging fleet. Standing requirements for BMD patrols have put increasing strain on the U.S. Navy’s surface ships.

The Navy now stands at a crossroads. BMD, while a burden, has also been a cash cow that has pushed the capabilities of the fleet exponentially forward over the past decade. The game-changing SPY-6 air and missile defense radar destined for DDG Flight III, for example, is a direct response to the need for more advanced BMD shooters. But a smaller fleet, needed for everything from anti-submarine patrols to freedom-of-navigation missions in the South China Sea, routinely has a large chunk tethered to BMD missions.

“Right now, as we speak, I have six multimission, very sophisticated, dynamic cruisers and destroyers ― six of them are on ballistic missile defense duty at sea,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said during an address at the recent U.S. Naval War College’s Current Strategy Forum. “You have to be in a tiny little box to have a chance at intercepting that incoming missile. So we have six ships that could go anywhere in the world, at flank speed, in a tiny little box, defending land.”

And for every six ships the Navy has deployed in a standing mission, it means 18 ships are in various stages of the deployment cycle preparing to relieve them.

The Pentagon, led by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, wants the Navy to be more flexible and less predictable ― “dynamic” is the buzzword of moment in Navy circles. What Richardson is proposing is moving standing requirements for BMD patrols away from ships underway and all the associated costs that incurs, and toward fixed, shore-based sites, and also surging the Navy’s at-sea BMD capabilities when there is an active threat (as was the case in July 2006 and again in 2017 during North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s spree of ballistic missile tests).

In a follow-up response to questions posed on the CNO’s comments, Navy spokesman Cmdr. William Speaks said the Navy’s position is that BMD is an integral part of the service’s mission, but where long-term threats exist, the Navy should “consider a more persistent, land-based solution as an option."

“This idea is not about the nation’s or the Navy’s commitment to BMD for the U.S. and our allies and partners ― the Navy’s commitment to ballistic missile defense is rock-solid,” Speaks said. “In fact, the Navy will grow the number of BMD-capable ships from 38 to 60 by 2023, in response to the growing demand for this capability.

“The idea is about how to best meet that commitment. In alignment with our national strategic documents, we have shifted our focus in an era of great power competition ― this calls us to think innovatively about how best to meet the demands of this mission and optimize the power of the joint force.”

Unintended consequences

While the idea of saving money by having fixed BMD sites and freeing up multimission ships is sensible, it may have unintended consequences, said Bryan McGrath, a retired destroyer skipper and owner of the defense consultancy The FerryBridge Group.

“The BMD mission is part of what creates the force structure requirement for large surface combatants,” McGrath said on Twitter after Defense News reported the CNO’s comments. “Absent it, the number of CG’s and DDG’s would necessarily decline. This may in fact be desirable, depending on the emerging fleet architecture and the roles and missions debate underway. Perhaps we need more smaller, multi-mission ships than larger, more expensive ones.

“But it cannot be forgotten that while the mission is somewhat wasteful of a capable, multi-mission ship, the fact that we have built the ships that (among other things) do this mission is an incredibly good thing. If there is a penalty to be paid in peacetime sub-optimization in order to have wartime capacity--should this not be considered a positive thing?”

McGrath went on to say that the suite of combat systems that have been built into Aegis have been in response to the BMD threat. And indeed, the crown jewels of the surface fleet ― Aegis Baseline 9 software, which allows a ship to do both air defense and BMD simultaneously; the Aegis common-source library; the forthcoming SPY-6; cooperative engagement ― have come about either in part or entirely driven by the BMD mission.

The earliest versions of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, the Flight I that lacks a helicopter hanger, would all be decommissioned or sold to another country by now if not for the BMD mission. That means the much-bemoaned 275-ship Navy would be even smaller today if not for the mission.

The tradeoffs for taking up the BMD mission have also been well-known for some time.

Writing in the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine in 2009, just after then-President Barack Obama announced he was preparing to forward-deploy Navy assets to Europe to provide BMD there, retired Rear Adm. Ben Wachendorf laid out some of the challenges with the mission.

“Navy BMD-capable combatants are multi-mission warships. When assigned a 24/7 BMD mission, their ability to maneuver over large areas will likely be restricted. It is also likely that the effectiveness of the ship’s other combat capabilities will tend to degrade. While that may not have a direct impact on the ship’s ability to execute the BMD mission, the deterioration certainly has a negative impact on other missions to which she may be assigned.

“There is also a possible adverse impact on crew morale caused by the boredom of continuous defensive patrols. Good leadership can overcome many of these challenges, but they must be addressed and carefully considered in operational planning.”

Wachendorf goes on to argue that if large numbers of surface ships are assigned to the BMD mission, they wouldn’t necessarily be available for other missions.

...
... goes on below due to size limit
 
the rest of the article from the post right above:
Peer rivals

But no matter which way the cookie crumbles, the Navy is signaling that for its tasked-out surface force, something has to give.

Speaking to a crowd at his last Surface Navy Association before being forced out of his position, former surface warfare boss Vice Adm. Thomas Rowden told the crowd that sailors need more time for readiness.

“They need help, and by help, they mean time,” Rowden said of his sailors. “Time to maintain their gear, time to refresh their basic individual and team skills, and time to unwind. Time will only come from two things, or a combination of them: more ships and fewer obligations. It is hard to see things any other way.”

In other words, rapidly growing the fleet could ease the burden on the fleet, or the Navy could reduce its standing underway commitments, or a combination of both.

A Navy official who spoke on condition of anonymity, to discuss the Navy’s shifting language on BMD, acknowledged the tone had shifted since the 2000s when the Navy latched onto the mission. But the official added that the situation more than a decade later has dramatically shifted.

“The strategic environment has changed significantly since the early 2000s ― particularly in the western Pacific. We have never before faced multiple peer rivals in a world as interconnected and interdependent as we do today,” the official said. “Nor have we ever seen technologies that could alter the character of war as dramatically as those we see emerging around us. China and Russia have observed our way of war and are on the move to reshape the environment to their favor.”

In response to the threat and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ desire to use the force more dynamically, the Navy is looking at its options, the official said. “This includes taking a look at how we employ BMD ships through the lens of great power competition to compete, deter and win against those who threaten us.”
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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
US Army’s long-range, surface-to-surface missile getting new life with $358M contract
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  1 day ago
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has awarded Lockheed Martin a $358 million production contract for the
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, which allows for a service life-extension program for old missiles, the company announced Monday. The firm will also produce new missiles for a Foreign Military Sales customer, Lockheed added.

ATACMS is the Army’s only surface-to-surface, long-range, 300-kilometer missile system. According to a Lockheed spokesperson, the missile system performs well in operations and is highly reliable.

But the
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that have been heating up in various theaters, and the service
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.

The service life-extension program, or SLEP, will allow customers to be able to upgrade existing Block 1 and Block 1A missiles with new technology and double the range, a Lockheed statement notes.

When an old ATACMS comes through the SLEP line, it’s “essentially a brand-new missile, and it’s reset to [a] 10-year shelf life,” a Lockheed spokesperson told Defense News.

In December 2014, the Army awarded Lockheed a contract to modernize the ATACMS weapon system, and the company embarked on an effort to upgrade and redesign all the internal electronics, developing and qualifying a new capability for a proximity sensor that enables ATACMS to have a height of burst.

ATACMS has a 500-pound class Harpoon warhead intended for point detonation, but giving the missile a height-of-burst capability increases its area effects for imprecisely located targets, the spokesperson said.

As part of the SLEP program for expired or aging ATACMS, Lockheed will clean up the old motors and then go through a remanufacture and final assembly process that incorporates the installation of the upgraded electronics.

Lockheed is set up, under the current contract, to update or build new missiles at a rate of 320 a year at its Camden, Arkansas, Precision Fires Production Center of Excellence, but there is a surge capacity of 400.

Still, the company is posturing to reach a rate of 500 new and upgraded ATACMSs per year based on interest and anticipated orders, the spokesperson said.

Lockheed has produced over 3,850 ATACMS missiles, and more than 600 of them have been fired in combat.

ATACMSs are packaged in a Guided Missile Launch Assembly pod and is fired from the Multiple Launch Rocket System family of launchers.
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