Update: US Army removes Raytheon from PrSM competition, leaving only Lockheed Martin

The US Army has decided not to provide Raytheon additional funding for the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) prototyping competition, the service’s programme manager for Strategic and Operational Rockets and Missiles under the Program Executive Office for Missiles & Space told Jane’s on 24 March.

The move leaves Lockheed Martin as the only remaining competitor and comes after Raytheon was unable to test fly its PrSM bid, the DeepStrike missile, because of what the company said were “technical issues”. Since then, the army and Raytheon had been in discussions to determine if Raytheon could move forward with the prototyping competition.

“The army made a decision not to provide additional funding to Raytheon at this time. Raytheon’s current period of performance ended on 20 March,” the programme manager told Jane’s .

Raytheon confirmed that it had been notified of the army’s decision and it would be stepping back.

Raytheon was proposing its DeepStrike for the new PrSM programme. However, “technical problems” prevented the company from conducting a test flight for the service and the army decided not to provide the funding for DeepStrike in the next competition stage. (Raytheon)

“Although we remain confident in our resolution to the technical issue that delayed our DeepStrike flight test, the army and Raytheon have mutually come to the decision to conclude our participation in the PrSM technology maturation and risk reduction phase,” the company wrote in a 25 March email to Jane’s .

While Raytheon worked to resolve its bid’s technical issues and figure out where it stands in the competition, Lockheed Martin had conducted two flight tests and has a third scheduled for 30 April, the army told Jane’s .