Hypersonics

Lockheed Job Listing Offers New Details About Long-Range Ground-Launched Hypersonic Weapon

A Lockheed Martin job posting has offered new details about the design and development schedule of a tactical, ground-launched hypersonic weapon that the U.S. Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency are working on together. The company won the contract to proceed to the third phase of this program, known as Operational Fires, or OpFires, two weeks ago.

Steve Trimble, Aviation Week's defense editor and good friend of The War Zone spotted the job opening for a "Staff SRM [solid rocket motor] Propulsion Engineer" at Lockheed Martin's facility in Grand Prairie, Texas, on Jan. 20, 2020, and shared it on Twitter. The posting itself is dated Dec. 17, 2019. This was in advance of the Maryland-headquartered defense giant officially getting the Phase 3 OpFires contract, worth just under $32 million, on Jan. 10. Phase 1 had wrapped up in 2019 and Phase 2, which involves further development and testing of various components of the system, is ongoing now. Phase 3 will involve Lockheed Martin integrating the various pieces into a complete weapon system and conducting an end-to-end test, presently scheduled to take place in 2022.