Joint Strike Missile enters final development phase

[Zarvan]

An F-16C/D Fighting Falcon from the USAF 445th Flight Test Group prepares to launch the Joint Strike Missile during FTM-2 over the Utah Test and Training Range on 29 October 2016. Source: Kongsberg

The Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace Joint Strike Missile (JSM) has entered its final phase of development following the successful conclusion of its last qualification flight test (FTM-5) in March this year.

Pending a Final Design Review in June, development of the missile is scheduled for completion by the end of 2018, following which it will be prepared for integration, carriage, and release trials with the Royal Norwegian Air Force’s (RNoAF’s) F-35A Lightning II multirole stealth fighter.

FTM-5 was the culmination of a four-year flight test campaign to qualify the missile for integration with the RNoAF’s F-35A. In a first end-to-end flight test for the missile, a JSM equipped with a live warhead was launched from a legacy F-16C/D Fighting Falcon from the US Air Force’s 445th Flight Test Group against a ‘realistic’ land target at the Utah Test and Training Range in the United States.

Kongsberg conducted the first flight test (FTM-1) of JSM in October 2015; in October 2016 the company conducted the first long-range powered flight test (FTM-2) of the missile over the Utah Test and Training Range – although FTM-2 was a re-run of an earlier failed flight test. In the May/June timeframe 2017, the company conducted the FTM-3/FTM-4 trials. In both tests the missile was flown without a seeker capability.

While the JSM development is technically independent of Norway’s participation in the F-35 programme, its progress, including an initial operational capability (IOC), is essentially being driven by the F-35 timeline, with the missile integration into the F-35A assigned to the Block 4.1 software release in the 2021 timeframe.

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