US Air Force awards contracts to design weapons for F-35 fighter jets

News, US June 11, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

U.S. Air Force awarded American defense manufacturers contracts for the first phase of a new program to develop air-to-ground attack weapons for F-35 stealth fighter jets.

Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris Technologies are among the three selected companies to be awarded contracts under the new weapons design and development program.

Spokeswoman for the U.S. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Armament Directorate Lena Lopez announced that three-month contracts, worth $2 million, have been awarded to these three companies under the Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) program.

The U.S. Air Force plans to move forward with its SiAW program which is an air-to-ground weapons system intended to penetrate anti-access environments through locating and striking vulnerable surface elements such as theater ballistic missile launchers, land-attack, and anti-ship cruise missile launchers, GPS jammers, anti-satellite systems, and integrated air defense systems.

The stand-in weapon would have a shorter range than standoff weapons, which are designed to be fired from a distance outside the range of enemy defenses, typically by an aircraft such as a B-52, whereas SiAW is being designed to be fired after penetrating the enemy airspace and getting closer to the target. The SiAW modification into the F-35 jets would make them more in line with the fifth-generation fighter jets while featuring a warhead capable of expanding its target rage.

An F-35A Lightning II fires an AMRAAM air-to-air missile off the California coast during a test on Oct. 30, 2014. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Air Force — *^{An F-35A Lightning II fires an AMRAAM air-to-air missile off the California coast during a test. (Image Credit: U.S. Air Force)}*

A Stand-in weapon would also be faster than a conventional warhead missile and much faster than any of the current F-35 missile systems. The Air Force’s interest in developing a missile that could hit targets such as enemy air defenses is yet another sign of how its focus is shifting away from the relatively uncontested airspace of the Middle East over the last two decades and toward figuring out how to fight in a contested environment against an advanced enemy such as China.

The first phase of SiAW development would focus on creating the design elements and digital engineering of the weapons. Northrop Grumman has proposed that would integrate the design elements from the Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided, or AARGM-ER, that it had developed for the U.S. Navy’s F-35 aircraft.

L3Harris on the other hand stated in a press release that its Agile Development Group will lead its SiAW designing process. The company plans to take advantage of the group’s digital engineering capabilities. The Agile Development Group includes several thousand engineers, program managers, technicians, and operations professionals focused on quickly developing solutions to deal with a variety of emerging threats.

*^{A fit-check integrated a mock-up of the AARGM-ER into a simulated F-35 weapons bay. (Image Credit: U.S. Navy)}*

While Lockheed Martin has designated its Missiles and Fire Control division to develop the design for the SiAW using the advanced digital engineering methods, pioneered by its Skunk Works unit.

All three companies are looking forward to developing the best design as they eye the $1.9 billion budget that U.S. Air Force plans to designate for the SiAW weapons development program in the year 2023.