US Army - Lockheed Martin Long Range Precision Fires (LRPF)

The Sun but at:
1:15 it states "hundreds of thousands" (of dollars, not millions).
2:15 it states 650+ miles. Don't know whether he's referring to the HX3 version or not though. lso references 3x HIMARS range, so possibly ~3x ATACMS.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvEVgLRbyFc

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/37116838/trump-leapfrogs-china-hypersonic-arms-race/
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Forest Green said:

U.S. Navy Air-Launched Version Of ‘Cheap’ Blackbeard Hypersonic Missile Hinted At​

https://www.twz.com/air/u-s-navy-ai...cheap-blackbeard-hypersonic-missile-hinted-at
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That article is incredibly over the top.

Is there any Indication what price point Castellion is shooting for or what processes are supposed to enable lower costs? It sounds like a company hype offensive, though apparently they do have contracts with the Army and Navy.
 
Josh_TN said:
That article is incredibly over the top.

Is there any Indication what price point Castellion is shooting for or what processes are supposed to enable lower costs? It sounds like a company hype offensive, though apparently they do have contracts with the Army and Navy.
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"In the hundreds of thousands as opposed to millions of dollars".
Especially if/when they're ordered and produced in batches of thousands to tens of thousands, I don't see how/why they would cost much more than a GMLRS/GMLRS-ER round.
And, yeah the company wants to make money and grow, of course they're looking for investment and talking up their product, that would be crazy not to be!
I'm fairly certain the design is based off a test missile made to represent an low-flying supersonic AShM, or maybe it was an AShBM's (ballistic AShM's)...
 

New CAML request for prototype proposals coming in days: Army CTO​

https://breakingdefense.com/2026/01...-prototype-proposals-coming-in-days-army-cto/
The request for prototype proposals, or RFPP, is set to be released at the end of this month or beginning of next month, CTO Alex Miller said in an interview Wednesday.
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Apart from the idea to move to a larger team of vendors, the service also wanted to rework the CAML program because the path that it was on “locked” the Army into fire control systems “rather than providing an actual autonomous launcher that we could reconfigure on the fly,” Miller said.
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“The goal is having an autonomous platform that we could rapidly roll on and roll off aircraft if we need to, but also have swappable, palletized munitions. So rather than just saying, ‘Hey, you know, the company that owns this fire control, they get to pick whatever weapon goes on there.’ That is not the objective. The objective is whatever the mission demands,” Miller said.

“If it’s a HIMARS, we put a HIMARS on it. If it’s something like a Blackbeard, we put a Blackbeard on it,” he added.
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Modular warhead, basically a bus for unleashing independent warheads, were supposed to be introduced in Increment 3. Very little information on specifics.
 
MadRat said:
Modular warhead, basically a bus for unleashing independent warheads, were supposed to be introduced in Increment 3. Very little information on specifics.
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It looks like the focus is on range (incr4) rather multiple warheads. Incr3 seems to have been more or less shelved. PrSM is a rather small missile to have multiple warheads of any type, unless they were just going to use the unguided munitions with multiple fuses developed for 155mm.
 
Josh_TN said:
It looks like the focus is on range (incr4) rather multiple warheads. Incr3 seems to have been more or less shelved. PrSM is a rather small missile to have multiple warheads of any type, unless they were just going to use the unguided munitions with multiple fuses developed for 155mm.
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Reminded me a bit of the old BAT cannisters from clustering containers in the 1980's. Back then they depended on finding hard targets scan the dropzone using microwave pencil beams as they spun around. Problem was there are a lot of rocks and boulders in the desert. So they used infrared to distinguish rocks from tanks. So the enemy tanks and trucks found they should leave the engine off until they need to move.
 
I believe that was SFW, not BAT, which was never produced but eventually was the basis for a micro GBU for UAVs.
 
Josh_TN said:
I believe that was SFW, not BAT, which was never produced but eventually was the basis for a micro GBU for UAVs.
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I may be giving BAT the credit for CBU-105 but pretty sure the latter was air dropped and used lasers. BAT was from a rocket IIRC.
 
MadRat said:
Reminded me a bit of the old BAT cannisters from clustering containers in the 1980's. Back then they depended on finding hard targets scan the dropzone using microwave pencil beams as they spun around. Problem was there are a lot of rocks and boulders in the desert. So they used infrared to distinguish rocks from tanks. So the enemy tanks and trucks found they should leave the engine off until they need to move.
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You're thinking of CBU-97 Sensor Fused Weapon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBU-97_Sensor_Fuzed_Weapon
 

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MadRat said:
I may be giving BAT the credit for CBU-105 but pretty sure the latter was air dropped and used lasers. BAT was from a rocket IIRC.
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You're fairly confused in your description of BAT and Skeet (SFW is the carrier for Skeet), neither of which used MMW.

Skeet was initially one of the two warhead options for Assault Breaker (the other being the TGSM), delivered by T16 (Patriot) or T22 (Lance) missiles cued by Pave Mover (later JSTARS).

Skeet was later (1994) used for the 4 submunitions in the BLU-108, which is itself packaged 10 to a CBU-97 Sensor Fuzed Weapon or CBU-105 (CBU-97 with the WCMD GPS/INS guidance kit). CBU-97/105 deploys 40 Skeets in a 1,500x500ft array.

Skeet's guidance is combined laser and IR, spun in a cone by the Skeet's aerodynamics. It looks for a warm vehicle-sized bump on the ground and fires an explosively forged penetrator if it finds one.

BAT, Brilliant Anti-Tank, OTOH, was conceptually an acoustic-guided weapon (hence BAT), also initially developed under Assault Breaker. The initial delivery vehicle was to be the A/MGM-137 Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile (AGM-158 JASSM precursor), but once TSSAM was cancelled the delivery platform switched to the M39A2 ATACMS Block II rocket, which was to carry 13 BATs. Each BAT would deploy a parachute and 4 wings, each wing having a microphone at its tip. The combined noise signals would be used to cue a nose mounted optical sensor, the parachute would be discarded and the BAT would be optically guided onto the target.

After M39A2 was cancelled, there was no role for BAT, but NG re-used the airframe for the laser-guided GBU-44/B Viper Strike, which was tested from the RQ-5 Hunter in 2003, then upgraded with GPS midcourse guidance in 2005 and subsequently integrated into the KC-130J and AC-130W. NG sold the Viper Strike line to MBDA in 2012, but SOCOM subsequently switched to the Dynetics Small Glide Munition.
 
In addition to the missile developed for the PrSM has any thought been given to creating an SSM variant of the Patriot SAM just like what Ukraine did with its FP-7 SRBM (Basically a modified SA-12 SSM variant).
 
NMaude said:
In addition to the missile developed for the PrSM has any thought been given to creating an SSM variant of the Patriot SAM just like what Ukraine did with its FP-7 SRBM (Basically a modified SA-12 SSM variant).
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Patriot T16 was one of the proposed airframes for Assault Breaker.
 
Josh_TN said:
That article is incredibly over the top.

Is there any Indication what price point Castellion is shooting for or what processes are supposed to enable lower costs? It sounds like a company hype offensive, though apparently they do have contracts with the Army and Navy.
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I'll believe it when I see it but they're claiming sub-$500,000 for a hypersonic strike capability.

Whether that means "legally distinct GMLRS-ER" or not is anyone's guess but American defense contractors seem more prone to reinventing the wheel rather than providing actual new capacities now. It would be cheaper to invest in existing primes but that's not very Innovative nor Veteran-owned Small Business.

Black Rifle Defense will start up soon. The first rocket powered entirely by caffeine.
 
MadRat said:
Modular warhead, basically a bus for unleashing independent warheads, were supposed to be introduced in Increment 3. Very little information on specifics.
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IIRC it's worked out that the different Increments aren't really steps in development as different capabilities that someone wanted. And also IIRC Inc3 was dropped entirely before the Ukraine Invasion in 2022.
 
If they aren't already in the FRP phase I have no doubt that the PrSM increment 1 will enter soon and I suppose this will bring forward the production schedule for the PrSM increment 2.
 

PrSM Increment 2 Takes Flight and Advances Army’s Moving-Target and Maritime Capability​

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-new...-armys-moving-target-and-maritime-capability/
The missile met test objectives in a 350-km flight launching from a HIMARS, deploying protective covers and capturing a suite of performance data that will be used to validate the system.
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WHAT’S NEW​


  • New Multi-Mode Seeker: PrSM’s new guidance system includes a seeker that provides targeting guidance and can lock on to moving, time-sensitive threats.
  • Maritime-Strike Option: PrSM Increment 2 adds maritime-strike capability to the baseline missile’s land-attack mission – expanding its role in joint, multi-domain operations.
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Is the terminal seeker a new design or a modified existing design repackaged for the PrSM?

Edit: Sandboxx has a new video out about the first combat use of the PrSM and it appears to have been performing better than expected:


With combat operations against Iran stretching into its 13th day, the United States has employed a wide variety of munitions against what is now more than a reported 6,000 targets struck over the span of just the first 12 days. And while many of these weapons have seen combat before, some, like Lockheed Martin's new PrSM missile, are seeing the fight for the very first time.​
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Well I hope find out what its' DoD tri-services designation is and hopefully an air-launched version will be developed.
 
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1000 km is fine for the European continental theater but not the Pacific, especially when you can't ship things closer without risking losing the transports. MRBM is up to 3000 km seems more like the minimum in this case. We need to employ container ships for this kind of launchers.
 
Seragina said:
1000 km is fine for the European continental theater but not the Pacific, especially when you can't ship things closer without risking losing the transports. MRBM is up to 3000 km seems more like the minimum in this case. We need to employ container ships for this kind of launchers.
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That less than the range of the Dark Eagle Hypersonic missile which has 3500 km range.

Which is pulled behind the standard Hempt truck for Army while the Navy can used in both the Zumwalt refit, the BV Virginias and is expected to be tested off the back of an LCS.

Warhead is unspecific besides being kinitic shotgun type spread and it confirm to have some type of terminal guidance for hitting maneuvering targets. For the warhead my bet is a dual mod deal much like the HVP, able to be Airburst at mach Jesus for a shotgun spread of tungsten BBs over an wide area that will mess up anything not a bunker or MBT, or it have just impact the target at the same speed but will all its weight and expode inside it for max effect. Either way its a nasty deal.

Its in Service in the Army since 2023 with production ramping up.
 
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Getting into IRBM territory at > 3000 km. Risky business using them for anything but nukes.
 
Firefinder said:
That less than the range of the Dark Eagle Hypersonic missile which has 3500 km range.

Which is pulled behind the standard Hempt truck for Army while the Navy can used in both the Zumwalt refit, the BV Virginias and is expected to be tested off the back of an LCS.

Warhead is unspecific besides being kinitic shotgun type spread and it confirm to have some type of terminal guidance for hitting maneuvering targets. For the warhead my bet is a dual mod deal much like the HVP, able to be Airburst at mach Jesus for a shotgun spread of tungsten BBs over an wide area that will mess up anything not a bunker or MBT, or it have just impact the target at the same speed but will all its weight and expode inside it for max effect. Either way its a nasty deal.

Its in Service in the Army since 2023 with production ramping up.
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Do you have a source indicating that there is a terminal seeker? First I had heard of it, outside speculation.
 

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