Kongsberg, Raytheon NSM teaming targets USN's future frigate programme
Grace Jean, Washington, DC - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
07 May 2015
Kongsberg's Naval Strike Missile is fired from the USN's LCS USS Coronado (LCS 4) in September 2014 on the Point Mugu sea test range, southern California. Kongsberg and Raytheon have signed a teaming agreement to offer NSM to potential customers including the USN's frigate programme. Source: US Navy
Key Points
- The Naval Strike Missile expected to be offered as an anti-ship weapon for the frigate and LCS programmes
- Raytheon's global supply chain and US-based missile production line could help lower NSM costs
With the US Navy (USN) firming up its future frigate acquisition approach, Kongsberg Defence Systems and Raytheon Missile Systems see their recent teaming on Norway's Naval Strike Missile (NSM) as providing an anti-ship missile option to meet the programme's over-the-horizon lethality requirement. The two industry partners also believe that the offering's price point will be 'cost competitive'.
The teaming agreement between Kongsberg and Raytheon is designed to enable the two companies to offer NSM to potential customers in the United States and elsewhere. Company officials said that the joint venture's first US business opportunity is via the USN's frigate (FF) programme, under which acquisitions are planned to begin in fiscal year 2019 (FY 2019).
"The timing for this is optimal," Thomas Bussing, vice-president of Raytheon advanced missile systems, told reporters during an April briefing on the agreement at Kongsberg's Alexandria, Virginia, office. "The USN is looking for innovative low-cost solutions for anti-surface warfare weapons, anti-ship weapons. This teaming relationship allows us to bring a very cost-effective [weapon] to the marketplace at this particular time."
NSM is a Kongsberg-developed, stealthy surface-to-surface guided weapon that is currently operational on board the Royal Norwegian Navy's (RNoN's) corvettes and frigates. With a range of 200 km, the canister-launched sea-skimming missile is able to discriminate targets autonomously, as well as employing evasive manoeuvres to defeat close-in shipboard defensive systems.
Poland also has acquired the missile for a mobile coastal defence system.
Kongsberg and Raytheon officials said that they hope to make inroads into the USN's small surface combatant programme, a 52-ship class comprising two Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) variants and a future upgraded flight 1 vessel (which in early 2015 was re-designated as a frigate). The frigate is intended as a 20-vessel programme to be based on a modified design from the current LCS programme. The navy is acquiring 32 LCSs, currently split between two variants, the Freedom steel monohull and the Independence aluminium trimaran design.
At the annual Navy League Sea-Air-Space symposium in April, USN's frigate programme manager Captain Dan Brintzinghoffer told reporters that he anticipates the navy selecting only a single missile system that would be fitted onto the vessel - even if the service opts to continue procuring two different ship variants. Whichever missile is selected could also be retrofitted onto LCS.
"It'll be a defining of the requirement - how far, how big, how long, what type of targeting capability it has - and then figuring out which missile meets that requirement, either through competitions that have already occurred, or competitions that will occur," said Capt Brintzinghoffer. "We'll end up putting [one missile] on both. I don't see a scenario playing out where the missile would be different on the ships."
For the USN's small surface combatants, Kongsberg officials told
IHS Jane's in April that they would employ the same launcher that they use to deploy the weapon from the RNoN's corvettes and frigates. "If the US should select NSM, it's the same canister concept," said Harald Annestad, president of Kongsberg Defence Systems. "We'll be using the mission modules there."
He added that Kongsberg has a 'ready design' to incorporate NSM into the LCS mission modules, which consist of 20-foot ISO shipping containers housing weapon systems that plug directly into the vessel's mission bay area.
IHS Jane's previously reported that the company had undertaken work to design a six-round NSM launcher to fit inside the LCS mission module (a four-round NSM launcher operates on board the Norwegian ships). The mission module would reside in the mission bay belowdecks while the NSM canister launcher would be placed topside on the deck and integrated with the ship via a mission control suite.
"We wouldn't look to have ... the vessel radically modified to include vertical cells," Bussing noted.
Annestad added, "NSM is already integrated to the Aegis system on the Norwegian frigates, and we're already working with Raytheon on system integration on the air warfare destroyers in Australia, so we have our hands very well around integrating NSM into [the] LCS' combat system."
Raytheon's expertise in integrating a variety of missiles into ships and submarines offers potential advantages for the partnership should NSM be selected for any USN platforms, officials said. "We've done this routinely with everything from Griffins to Tomahawks to a variety of other weapons that are launched from surface ships," said Bussing. "We do ESSM [Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile], RAM [Rolling Airframe Missile], SM-6, SM-3. Each of these have different launchers, different ways in which they're integrated into the machine control systems, into the CICs [combat information centres]."
NSM would be no different, Bussing argued. "This one is fairly straightforward, especially in the fact you can place it on the deck - not much modification to the ship. [It's] a matter of running power and communications to it and up to the CIC, and incorporating it into the CIC such that it's integrated with the fire-control systems on the ship."
Bussing also revealed to
IHS Jane's that Raytheon officials had briefed the USN's chief of naval operations and his staff on NSM as part of a broader discussion on advanced missiles during a March visit to the company's Arizona facilities. He added, "It hits a need that they fundamentally have."
Officials from both companies acknowledged that cost will play a large role in any USN decisions, and emphasised that NSM is an affordable solution.
"On production, with the teaming [agreement] we will work closely with Raytheon to ensure that we get the costs down as far as possible, both combining purchases [and] working on similar components, using the bigger buying power that Raytheon has," Annestad told
IHS Jane's .
While Kongsberg officials declined to disclose the cost of the missile, they said that the system compares favourably to competitors in terms of price per missile.
While some systems require multiple missiles to penetrate ship air defences and hit the same target, NSM's cost effectiveness derives from its ability to engage a target in the end phase by manoeuvring to avoid close-in weapon systems.
In September 2014 on the Point Mugu sea test range off southern California, Kongsberg conducted an NSM demonstration on board an Independence variant LCS, USS
Coronado (LCS 4). Fired from the flight deck, the missile struck a mobile sea target 100 n miles away.
The US Navy's ex-USS Ogden (LPD 5) is hit by a Naval Strike Missile (NSM) fired from the Royal Norwegian Navy frigate HNoMS Fridtjof Nansen (F 310) during a sinking exercise at the 'RIMPAC 2014' exercise. (US Navy)
NSM's titanium warhead weighs around 250 lb but officials classify it as a 500-lb class warhead because of the effects that it has against targets, officials told reporters. In two previous demonstrations, including a live-fire shot at an ex-USN ship during the 2014 'Rim of the Pacific' exercise, the NSM was able to hit the targets with lethal accuracy. Kongsberg officials said that around eight to 12 NSMs would fit on board the LCS variants, depending upon the weight capacity of each vessel.
Raytheon's Bussing said that NSM is comparable in cost to a Block IV Tomahawk missile. "I would say they're the same price point, maybe a little more expensive than Block IV," he said. However, he noted that Tomahawk is intended for "very long-range applications" and so is "not intended to survive the same way against the ship" as NSM.
According to the USN, the unit price for 214 Block IV Tomahawk missiles acquired in FY 2015 was USD1.074 million each. In its FY 2016 budget submission, DoD is requesting USD210 million to acquire a final batch of 100 Block IV Tomahawk missiles.
Officials from both Raytheon and Kongsberg said that because NSM is operational and is being manufactured already in Norway, the USN would not have to pay non-recurring engineering and development costs. As for where the missile would be built if the United States or another customer placed orders, they said the teaming agreement allows for flexibility.
"If a customer comes in with a fairly low volume, it's not cost effective to pick up a new production line. So we will co-operate on technical stuff and on smaller volumes. That will be an existing production line," said Annestad, "but a bigger quantity by [the] USN makes it cost effective to set up a parallel production line in the United States. The agreement is flexible on what makes sense for the two companies and for the customer."
Kongsberg would be able to reduce NSM costs by leveraging Raytheon's worldwide supply chain, officials said. "Raytheon has a huge supply chain. Many of the parts are made in the United States. Just through common buys, we can reduce costs by virtue of ... our own supply chain network," said Bussing.
Raytheon's own manufacturing methods could also help drive out costs, along with swapping out components for less expensive ones, Bussing added. Making use of existing missile production lines at its Arizona-based facility also represents a potential cost saving. "Typically on a line, we make multiple missiles. That allows you to keep the group of individuals that are responsible for manufacturing those things to a minimum, because there's no down time. They move from one system to another so the line is always hot," he said.
In addition to pursuing options with the USN, the team is also marketing the missile concurrently to other potential customers. It has seen success in Malaysia, where NSM was selected for the Royal Malaysian Navy's Gowind 2500-design Second Generation Patrol Vessel - Littoral Combat Ship (SGPV-LCS).
Kongsberg officials see a growing international market, with navies seeking to offset growing threats with new equipment.
"If you look at it, NSM is at the start of its lifetime ... and it's meeting the threats today," Annestad said, "but it also has the capacity to take on new technology to meet the threats in 2025, 2030. I think that's also a big advantage."
Kongsberg, Raytheon NSM teaming targets USN's future frigate programme - IHS Jane's 360