Lockheed Martin awarded contract for PrSM long-lead items

The United States Army Contracting Command has awarded Lockheed Martin a USD20 million contract for the procurement of long-lead item materials to support the development, testing, and qualification of the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) system.

According to a US Department of Defense (DoD) notification on 29 April, “bids for the contract were solicited via the internet, with one received”. Work will be carried out in Grand Prairie, Texas, with an estimated completion date of 28 April 2025, the notification added.

PrSM is an accelerated Army initiative, dating from March 2017, to develop and field an all-weather long-range precision strike capability, using ground-launched missile-delivered indirect fires, to engage imprecisely located area and point targets.

Intended to replace the legacy non-IM and Cluster Munition policy-compliant Lockheed Martin MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) in the US Army inventory, the PrSM requirement was, until early last year, being competed by both Lockheed Martin with the Precision Strike Missile, and Raytheon with its DeepStrike missile solution.

However, in March 2020 the US Army opted not to release additional funding for Raytheon’s PrSM prototyping effort, with the company exiting the Technology Maturation and Risk Reduction (TMRR) phase without flight testing DeepStrike, leaving Lockheed Martin as the only competitor in the programme

Lockheed Martin’s PrSM solution features a new insensitive munitions solid rocket motor developed by Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (NGIS), and an enhanced lethality warhead for the PrSM target set. Guidance is delivered by advanced inertial navigation supported by a GPS capability.