AGM-158C LRASM

The AGM-158C LRASM (Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, colloquially pronounced lə-RAZ-ehm) is a stealth air launch anti-ship cruise missile developed for the United States Air Force and United States Navy by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Derived from the AGM-158B JASSM-ER, the LRASM was intended to pioneer more sophisticated autonomous targeting capabilities than the U.S. Navy's current Harpoon anti-ship missile, which has been in service since 1977. In June 2009, DARPA awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin for the two-phase LRASM demonstration program. In December 2013, DARPA publicized its intent to award a sole-source follow-on contract to Lockheed Martin for continued maturation of the LRASM subsystems and system design, which will be transitioned to the Navy. In March 2014, Raytheon/Kongsberg filed a joint protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) against DARPA's decision. In June 2014, GAO denied the protest, holding an award to any other source would be likely to cause substantial duplication of costs that were not expected to be recovered through competition, and unacceptable delays in meeting the Government's needs. The Navy was authorized by the Pentagon to put the LRASM into limited production as an operational weapon in February 2014 as an urgent capability stop-gap solution to address range and survivability problems with the Harpoon and to prioritize defeating enemy warships, which has been neglected since the end of the Cold War but taken on importance with the modernization of the People's Liberation Army Navy. In March 2014, the Navy said it will hold a competition for the Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare (OASuW)/Increment 2 anti-ship missile as a follow-on to LRASM to enter service in 2024. The OASuW Increment 2 competition will be completely open and start by FY 2017, and concluded in 2023 with the selection of a hypersonic anti-ship missile. It is expected...