On October 22, U.S. and South Korea (ROK) forces worked overnight to complete the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) battery deployment in Seongju, located 300 km south of Seoul. The 35th Air Defense Artillery brigade, the unit charged with manning the system, is set to be joined by additional U.S. and ROK troops to...
On October 18, the U.S. Navy announced an $18.2 million contract to modify Lot 6 AGM-88B High-speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM) into 25 AGM-88E Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missiles (AARGM) for the Italian government. According to the Department of Defense, 90% of the upgrade work will be performed in California and 10% in Istrana, Italy. Used for...
The Department of Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium (DOTC) has awarded Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Technovative Applications contracts to generate concept designs for replacing the Patriot air-and-missile defense (AMD) radar. The Army is looking for a radar that has a 360-degree, lower-tier sensor that will be able to address the increasingly complex missile threat...
On October 11, U.S. Naval Air Systems Command announced that the Joint Standoff Weapon Block III (JSOW C-1) has achieved full operational capability. The JSOW demonstrated its capabilities in several fleet-wide exercises in 2016, testing successfully from F/A-18 Super Hornets. A glide bomb, the JSOW C-1 is the latest variant in the AGM-154 JSOW family,...
On October 16, Syria’s national “Air Force and Air Defense Day,” a Syrian S-200 surface-to-air missile system fired on several Israeli aircraft flying reconnaissance over Lebanon. The missile interceptor failed to hit its target, and the aircraft safely exfiltrated Lebanese airspace. Several hours later a separate Israeli sortie launched four missiles at the S-200 site...
On October 15, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) announced that ships from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States participated in a live-fire integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) scenario. During the exercise, the Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) tracked and defeated a medium-range ballistic...
On October 6, vessels from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom participating in the inaugural Formidable Shield 2017 (FS17) exercise tested the ships’ ballistic and cruise missile defense capabilities. Designed to improve NATO allied interoperability in an integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) environment, FS17 tested participants’...
On October 6, a senior Raytheon official announced the successful intercept of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) by a Stinger missile mounted on a Stryker combat vehicle during a SHORAD demonstration at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Attempting to fill the Army’s capability gap in Europe for mobile short range air defenses (SHORAD),...
U.S. Army soldiers successfully tested the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS). Referred to as a Soldier Checkout Event (SCOE), the tests took place at Tobin Wells in Fort Bliss, Texas over the course of three weeks in August. According to a Northrop Grumman statement, IBCS fought “26 simulated air battles against...
The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the Department of Defense agency responsible for arms sales, announced that the State Department has approved a possible Foreign Military Sale of the AIM-120C-7 Advanced Medium-range Air-to-air Missile (AMRAAM) to Japan. According to the DSCA press release, the Japanese government has requested the possible sale of 56 AMRAAMs...
