Monica Jackson
The U.S. Navy will possibly debut in mid- to late 2019 a new over-the-horizon anti-ship missile jointly developed by Raytheon and Kongsberg Gruppen, Defense News reported Thursday.
Lockheed Martin will be in charge of installing the Naval Strike Missile on the service’s fourth Freedom-class littoral combat ship called USS Detroit or LCS-7, as well as on the future FFG(X) guided-missile frigate.
The NSM will allow the Navy to defend Asia-Pacific islands from territorial takeovers by adversaries such as China.
The planned deployment and installation of the missile is months ahead of its original schedule, which is some time in 2020.
Octavio Babuca, senior manager of business development and air warfare systems at Raytheon, said the Navy used a contract option to speed up the launch of the NSM.
Raytheon won the potential $847.6M contract with Kongsberg in June to develop the anti-ship missile.
