Joint Air-Ground Missile

Derived from the Joint Common Missile (JCM) that was cancelled in 2005, the U.S. Joint Air-Ground Missile (JAGM) program, joint among the Army, Navy, and Air Force, would replace short-range tactical missiles including:

• AGM-114 Hellfire carried by Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, ARH-70 Arapaho scout helicopters, and MQ-1C Skywarrior unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and MH-60R/S Seahawk helicopters
• AGM-65 Maverick aboard Marine AH-1Z Viper helicopters, Navy F-18 Hornet and F-18 Super Hornet aircraft, and possibly the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, MQ-8 Fire Scout and A160 Hummingbird UAVs, and some armed C-130 aircraft
• BGM-71 TOW on the AH-1Z; it is not clear if ground-launched TOWs are under consideration

The goal is a missile that is 110 Lbs, 7” diameter, 70” long, with a range of 0.5 – 16 km when fired from helicopters and 2 – 28 km if fired from fixed wing aircraft.

Bidders include Raytheon teamed with Boeing against Lockheed Martin. The Raytheon-Boeing team is proposing the same Common Tri-Mode Seeker (CMTS) (imaging infrared, radar and laser-guided) seeker that Raytheon developed for the GBU-53 Small Diameter Bomb. Lockheed Martin builds on its existing Hellfire, as well as the "Hellfire II semi-active laser or millimeter wave Hellfire Longbow missiles, and on the cooled sensors "used by the Lockheed/Raytheon Javelin imaging infrared (IIR) missile to add extra fire-and-forget insurance. Lockheed Martin can also leverage its incumbent status for both the current Hellfire missile family, and the M299 missile launcher that equips most helicopters."

The main foreign competitor is the Brimstone missile built by a Boeing and MBDA team. For the JAGM, Boeing-Raytheon would use the Brimstone body with a new rocket motor subcontracted to ATK, Raytheon’s XM1111 Medium Range Munition guided tank shell software, and CMTS. CMTS was also part of the cancelled Future Combat Systems non-line-of-sight missile. CMTS would be upgraded for JAGM production.