Next month, Air Force personnel from the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base (AFB), Ariz. in the Sonoran Desert plan to show industry representatives examples of B-52H carriage equipment.
This will be equipment that the service is looking to modify for the future AGM-181 Long Range Standoff (LRSO) nuclear cruise missile by RTX’s Raytheon segment. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is refurbishing the W80-4 warhead, through a life extension program, to tip the LRSO. NNSA has said that it expects to finish the first LRSO warhead by September, 2027.
The Defense Department has said that the nearly $16 billion LRSO program–almost $7 billion for development and $8.6 billion for procurement–is to enter low-rate initial production after a May 2027 decision and that the missile will reach “initial capability” in May 2030 after a March 2029 full-rate production decision. DoD has estimated a more than $14 million unit cost for the 1,087 LRSOs. Senate defense authorizers have said that they want to accelerate LRSO.
The Huntsville, Ala., site of Integrated Solutions for Systems (IS4S) has been working on engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) for the LRSO carriage equipment for the B-52H bomber by Boeing under a nearly $120 million delivery order signed on Aug. 31 2022.
Boeing designed the carriage equipment for the B-52H but declined to turn over the data rights to the Air Force–a decision that resulted in the service’s EMD award to IS4S for the surrogate carriage equipment.
Exchange Monitor affiliate Defense Daily first published this article.