buglerbilly
10-03-10, 02:37 AM
New NLOS-LS Plan Adds Testing To Schedule
By KATE BRANNEN
Published: 9 Mar 2010 17:44
The U.S. Army and Raytheon intend to fire more test shots to fix what went wrong during a recent limited user test for the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS).
"The plan that we're working has us back shooting missiles this summer," Michelle Lohmeier, Raytheon's deputy vice president of Land Combat, said March 8.
The service and Raytheon are still refining how many shots and other details of the additional testing, she said. The final plan will be presented to the Defense Acquisition Board on April 2, according to Army spokesman Paul Mehney.
The NLOS-LS Precision Attack Missile failed four out of six times during a flight-limited user test that took place at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., between Jan. 26 and Feb. 5.
Lohmeier said the Army and Raytheon know the causes of two of the failures. In one, it was a software issue that has "already been addressed and tested and confirmed," she said.
In the other, "we understand that it's a little adjustment that's needed in our algorithms," she said.
The remaining two test failures, both of which were wide misses, are still being investigated. These "had somewhat similar behavior, if you will, and were wide misses, so those are kind of culminating in the same kind of fault tree," she said.
Lohmeier said the investigation so far indicates that the system's hardware design is "solid."
As for the missile's price, which has also received attention, the company provided on March 4 a letter to the service's Program Executive Office for Integration that outlined how the company planned on reaching $198,000 for the average unit production price for the Army's acquisition objective of 9,942 missiles.
In the service's budget request for fiscal year 2011, the Precision Attack Missile costs $466,000. According to an internal Army briefing, the service expected that number to drop to $304,000 once the program entered full-rate production.
"There's been a lot of changes in the acquisition strategy, both in quantity and in the amount of time those missiles will be produced," said Lohmeier.
As for the company's expectations going into the limited user test, "We were still introducing some new functionality that hadn't been fully vetted during the [system design and development] phase. In an ideal situation, you'd like to go into LUT with everything - every mode, every functionality - thoroughly tested multiple times prior to entering that phase, and that was not the situation," said Lohmeier.
"We certainly surfaced some issues that we need to address," she said. ■
By KATE BRANNEN
Published: 9 Mar 2010 17:44
The U.S. Army and Raytheon intend to fire more test shots to fix what went wrong during a recent limited user test for the Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System (NLOS-LS).
"The plan that we're working has us back shooting missiles this summer," Michelle Lohmeier, Raytheon's deputy vice president of Land Combat, said March 8.
The service and Raytheon are still refining how many shots and other details of the additional testing, she said. The final plan will be presented to the Defense Acquisition Board on April 2, according to Army spokesman Paul Mehney.
The NLOS-LS Precision Attack Missile failed four out of six times during a flight-limited user test that took place at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., between Jan. 26 and Feb. 5.
Lohmeier said the Army and Raytheon know the causes of two of the failures. In one, it was a software issue that has "already been addressed and tested and confirmed," she said.
In the other, "we understand that it's a little adjustment that's needed in our algorithms," she said.
The remaining two test failures, both of which were wide misses, are still being investigated. These "had somewhat similar behavior, if you will, and were wide misses, so those are kind of culminating in the same kind of fault tree," she said.
Lohmeier said the investigation so far indicates that the system's hardware design is "solid."
As for the missile's price, which has also received attention, the company provided on March 4 a letter to the service's Program Executive Office for Integration that outlined how the company planned on reaching $198,000 for the average unit production price for the Army's acquisition objective of 9,942 missiles.
In the service's budget request for fiscal year 2011, the Precision Attack Missile costs $466,000. According to an internal Army briefing, the service expected that number to drop to $304,000 once the program entered full-rate production.
"There's been a lot of changes in the acquisition strategy, both in quantity and in the amount of time those missiles will be produced," said Lohmeier.
As for the company's expectations going into the limited user test, "We were still introducing some new functionality that hadn't been fully vetted during the [system design and development] phase. In an ideal situation, you'd like to go into LUT with everything - every mode, every functionality - thoroughly tested multiple times prior to entering that phase, and that was not the situation," said Lohmeier.
"We certainly surfaced some issues that we need to address," she said. ■