Moderadores: Lepanto, poliorcetes, Edu, Orel
By Stephen Trimble
The US Congress is set to wipe out funding for 379 medium-range air-to-air missiles in the fiscal year 2012 budget.
Senate appropriators have passed a FY2012 budget proposal that would slash all procurement of the Raytheon AIM-120D AMRAAM, including 218 missiles for the US Air Force and 161 for the US Navy.
The Senate panel's vote comes three months after the House of Representatives also passed a FY2012 budget that proposed to eliminate orders for the AIM-120D.
Both versions have to be approved by a joint committee and signed by US President Barack Obama before the budget is passed into law.
No explanation for the budget cut was offered in the Senate's report on the appropriations bill. However, the House committee's report blamed its funding reduction for AMRAAM on Raytheon's production system.
As of June, the company's production backlog was behind by about 100 missiles.
The House also noted that the USAF was still negotiating terms on the previous year's contract for AIM-120Ds.
Raytheon declined to comment on the latest Senate move.
The AIM-120D is the latest variant of the AMRAAM family to enter production. It adds a two-way data link and extended range.
Pues si los rusos siguen con sus planes, USA se va a quedar más y más atrás en eso. No lo entiendo. Algo no me cuadra.
ya, pero la cosa no es tan evidente si el ruso (el chino?) tiene misiles más capaces que los AMRAAM.
No se conoce con exactitud (yo no, vaya) el alcance de las últimas versiones en producción del R-77, por poner sólo un caso, pero me temo que es superior al AIM-120C.
By Stephen Trimble
A Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman team has revealed plans to compete for a contract to replace two Raytheon missiles - the AIM-120 AMRAAM and AGM-88 HARM - despite being shut out of a series of technology development contract awards.
A notional concept for the US Air Force's next generation missile (NGM) was displayed in Lockheed's exhibit at the Air Force Association's annual convention in Washington DC.
The missile showed a standard AMRAAM, with four control fins mounted on the mid-body and the tail of the missile. It was not clear how the notional concept compares to the Lockheed/Northrop team's internal designs.
The USAF is planning to release a request for proposals to industry in late 2012, said Chuck Morant, Lockheed's manager of strike weapons business development.
© Stephen Trimble/Flightglobal
Lockheed also confirmed that its partnership with Northrop remains active, and that the US firms have invested internal research and development funding in the NGM concept.
US aerospace and defence firm Alliant Techsystems (ATK) has dropped out of the Lockheed/Northrop team that was originally announced in July 2008, Morant added.
The NGM, previously known as the joint dual-role air dominance missile, is being designed to equip the Lockheed F-22 and F-35 with a long-range missile that can strike other aircraft or surface-to-air missile systems.
The missile must also be small enough to be stored inside an internal weapons bay.
Boeing and Raytheon each received competitive awards last year from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to complete an advanced missile demonstration under the triple target terminator (T3) programme.
The T3 programme was launched after Boeing was awarded a series of technology development awards by the Air Force Research Laboratory, to work on a new directional warhead and a new kind of seeker with an integrated fuse.
Each of the technologies is expected to feed into the advanced NGM programme.
The USAF plans to launch the competitive prototype demonstration programme next year, according to acquisition documents.
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