The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has tapped Lockheed Martin to produce a swarm of autonomous cruise missiles capable of wreaking havoc on enemy air defenses in a highly networked and coordinated fashion.
The company’s missiles and fire control group of Dallas beat six rivals to win a five-year, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract worth up to $110 million for AFRL’s Gray Wolf cruise missile experiment.
The contract relates to a broad agency announcement released by AFRL in March 2017 for the “design, development, manufacture and testing” of a low-cost, subsonic cruise missile prototype that uses collaborative networking for enhanced navigation, survivability and attack of particular targets.
AFRL had anticipated splitting the available $110 million between two vendors, providing $45 million each, but retained the right to award “zero, one or more contracts.” It seems Lockheed’s entry won the whole share.
The contract, announced by the Defense Department on Dec. 18, includes a $2.8 million down payment to get started, with the ordering period extending through 2022. The broad agency announcement, as amended in May, notes that the contract for Gray Wolf might be extended another two years, through 2024.
The defense industry has been reluctant to comment publicly about the Gray Wolf opportunity, but some information has been disclosed in U.S. Air Force documents.
AFRL’s broad agency announcement says this will be a spiraled development program aimed at demonstrating low-cost manufacturing processes and collaborative attacks.
The laboratory wants to see if the aerospace industry can deliver batches of expendable cruise missiles at a significantly lower price compared to today’s multimillion-dollar weapons, even when delivered in low quantities and on short notice. It also wants to validate new concepts of operations, tactics, techniques and procedures and regulatory policies for the employment of autonomy-enabled weapons like Gray Wolf.
Over the course of the program, Lockheed’s cruise missile platform will be paired with a variety of payloads for kinetic strikes, electronic attack and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
To succeed, the long-range, networked missiles must be capable of disabling various components of an integrated air defense system in a highly contested environment, including surface-to-air missile, radar and communications sites.
“Low unit costs support affordable missile attrition and imposes high-cost adversary response,” according to an undated slide presentation by Jack Blackhurst, AFRL’s director of plans and programs. “The spiral experimentation framework provides rapid technology prototyping and provides multiple transition opportunities.”
Analogous efforts being pursued by AFRL include the Low-Cost Attritable Strike Unmanned Aerial System Demonstration, won in 2016 by Kratos Defense & Security Solutions for the XQ-58A Valkyrie. Another is DARPA’s Gremlins, won by Dynetics and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, which will demonstrate the launch and recovery of unmanned aircraft from a Lockheed C-130 Hercules.
Gray Wolf is expected to be an attractive air-launched armament for Air Force bombers, cargo aircraft and perhaps the Strategic Capabilities Office’s proposed “Arsenal Plane.”