Joint Common Missile to be brought back from the dead and placed on life-support

Despite attempts by the Office of the Secretary of Defense to land the final blow to the terminated Joint Common Missile program, appropriations conferees have approved a measure that would keep the missile's development on life support by funneling funds into the program.

House and Senate conferees last week ironed out the details of the fiscal year 2006 defense appropriations bill, which included a $30 million add to the Army-led JCM program to continue the missile's development.

"The conferees support continuation of this program noting that this is the first program to have successfully completed the requirements determination process implemented in the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System," the House version of the bill said.

Accordingly, lawmakers said the Army would provide $26 million in research, development, test and evaluation funding to the program, and the Navy would chip in $4 million in RDT&E funding.

JCM, designed as a next-generation, multipurpose replacement for Hellfire, Longbow Hellfire and Maverick air-to-ground missiles, was terminated by the Defense Department last year in program budget decision No. 753. The program's termination cut $2.3 billion in funding that had been earmarked to complete development and buy 2,134 missiles ( ITA , Jan. 17, p1). The Army's share of the cut was $928 million, the Navy's $1.5 billion.

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Supposedly it will cost less to develope the JCM than to keep modifying existing missiles. Think of this as the JSF of air-surface missiles.


[edit on 4-1-2006 by NWguy83]

Or they could just adapt the near-operational MDBA Brimstone missile. It doesnt fully comply to all of the specs of the JCM program, but the all-in-all performance is sufficient, and it is already downward-compatible to all Hellfire launching platforms

Originally posted by Lonestar24
Or they could just adapt the near-operational MDBA Brimstone missile. It doesnt fully comply to all of the specs of the JCM program, but the all-in-all performance is sufficient, and it is already downward-compatible to all Hellfire launching platforms

I heard Boeing is already trying to sell some Brimstone missiles to the DoD. So I guess we will just have to wait and see which missile the DoD goes for.