U.S. Navy, Army Defend $80M Budget To Bridge Missile Gap

Without a proposed $80 million industrial expansion, the Navy and the Army won’t have enough missiles for their nascent hypersonic weapons programs, the Navy warned lawmakers recently, Justin Katz reported for Breaking Defense.

Photo Insert: The USS Zumwalt

By fiscal 2025 the Pentagon wants to produce the assembled missiles, known as all-up-rounds or AURs, at a rate of 24 per year, but the current capacity is half that, according to a Navy document obtained by Breaking Defense.

The document outlines the Navy’s many objections to cuts made in the defense spending bill by congressional appropriators, from slashed funding for the surge sealift fleet to F-35Cs.

Additionally, the document warns that production requirements for the advanced payload module needed to integrate the Navy’s hypersonic Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) weapon onto both the Zumwalt-class destroyers and Virginia-class submarines also will be lacking.

The capacity in 2024 would be only one per year — four less than the Pentagon’s requirement.

The Navy and Army are jointly developing two distinct hypersonic weapons, the CPS and the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, respectively. The military’s current plan calls for CPS to be first integrated onto Zumwalt (DDG 1000) during maintenance availability in 2024 and onto Virginia-class submarines in 2028.

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic