{"id":29638,"date":"2018-06-27T14:13:47","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T14:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2018\/06\/27\/hellfire-missile-replacement-cleared-for-production\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T22:24:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T22:24:27","slug":"hellfire-missile-replacement-cleared-for-production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/land\/2018\/06\/27\/hellfire-missile-replacement-cleared-for-production\/","title":{"rendered":"Hellfire missile replacement cleared for production"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

UPDATE: This story has been updated to included comment from the U.S. Army.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 The U.S. Army\u2019s Hellfire missile replacement \u2014 the Joint Air-to-Ground Missile<\/a> \u2014 has been cleared for low-rate initial production, Lockheed Martin announced June 27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lockheed will deliver 2,631 missiles under the LRIP contract, Col. David Warnick, the Army\u2019s program manager for Joint Attack Munition Systems (JAMS), said in a June 27 statement to Defense News.
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The Lockheed Martin-developed JAGM is ultimately slated to replace the Hellfire missile \u2014 also a Lockheed product \u2014 on all platforms that fire them. It features a new dual-mode seeker and guidance system mated to a Hellfire missile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its seeker combines a semi-active laser with millimeter-wave radar sensors that give it the capability to go up against stationary and moving land and maritime targets in bad weather or obscured conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAGM has completed 10 limited-user test flights over several months, leading up to the Army\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decision comes after a 24-month engineering and manufacturing development phase program<\/a> where JAGM was tested and qualified on the AH-64E Apache and the AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JAGM will ultimately be qualified to fire from a wide variety of platforms including unmanned aircraft<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initial operational capability through the Army is expected in early 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the JAGM hardware demonstrated more than 95 percent reliability in flight testing, the Army had to work through some challenges surrounding the system, including cyber vulnerability, earlier on.<\/p>\n\n\n\t