The Navy has selected the Norwegian Naval Strike Missile for the LCS.
I wonder why the Harpoon wasn't chosen. The Navy has used Harpoons for almost forty years. The goal of any logistician is to keep the number of different types of ammunition in an arsenal as low as possible. (Which is why the proponents of adopting a 6.5mm rifle are pissing in the wind.)
The NSM has a much smaller warhead, each round is 600lbs lighter. Either the LCS has a bad weight problem and the Navy is trying to keep that under control, or this is just another "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" in which the Norwegians will buy some ships they'd rather not, in exchange for the ability to mark the NSM's promotional materials with the logo "as sold to the United States Navy". Either argument will have to be rather strong to fend off the "but foreign = bad!!1!!" crowd in Congress (why FN and Beretta, for example, built plants in the U.S.).
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4 comments:
Given the Turkey II (F-35) is getting a variant of the NSM, there's the commonality card. The NSM is also considerably more stealthy and manuverable than the Harpoon, which is why they are trotting out the Harpoon Next Gen. Note that the Harpoon Next Gen also has the smaller warhead...but we've already been over the smaller ain't always better discussion here too.
I recall hearing that the NSM has some purported stealth capabilities. Perhaps that's the reason? Might also have better evasion capabilities/software...
FWIW : The NSM is the ONLY such weapon which will fit in the F35 internal bay. So its in the US arsenal anyway.
Stu, the NSM doesn't fit...the "modified" land-attack version, the JSM, is what fits.
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