Jane Edwards
The U.S. Air Force has awarded three-month contracts to Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and L3Harris Technologies to support the initial phase of a program meant to build a stand-in attack weapon that could be used by the F-35 fighter aircraft to counter hostile air defenses, Defense News reported Wednesday.
Lena Lopez, a spokeswoman for the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s armament directorate, said each of the contracts, which were awarded on May 25, is valued at $2 million.
The SIAW program’s first phase focuses on digital engineering and design and the service branch said the air-to-ground weapon system would enable warfighters to destroy integrated air defense systems, GPS jammers, land-attack and anti-ship cruise missile launchers, ballistic missile launchers and other enemy targets that create an anti-access/area denial environment.
According to the report, the service’s fiscal year 2023 budget proposal sought $78 million to procure 42 weapon units through the SIAW program.
Michael Stuart, director of business development at Northrop, said the Air Force plans to adopt an open-system architecture to enable the weapon to integrate different modular platforms and facilitate upgrades.
In March 2021, the Air Force named L3Harris, Lockheed, Northrop, Boeing and Raytheon Technologies as five potential sources that could support its SIAW rapid prototyping requirement.
