Army ramps up missile production and modernizes integrated fires

All right. I'm Jen Judson, land warfare reporter with Defense News, and I'm here with Major General Frank Lozano

Good morning. PEO Missiles and Space. General, thank you so much for joining us here at the Defense News booth at AUSA

You have an enormous portfolio. There's so much we could talk about. But talk about, I think a big interest for our readers is where you are in scaling up your production for so many different types of missiles

You know, you've got Prism, you've got Pac-3, you've got Gimler's, you name it

You're trying to ramp them up. So highlight some of the areas where you are ramping up and maybe talk a little bit about some of the risk and bottlenecks that you might be experiencing at the moment

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Jen, for hosting me this morning. So, yeah, you're absolutely right

We're doing a lot of work to try to increase production capacity as well as reduce production lead times for PAC-3 MSE, PRISM, as well as guided MLRS

Both from an air and missile defense perspective and a long-range precision fires perspective, those are key capabilities for us

So the first thing that we want to do with Lockheed, who manages all three of those items for us, is first exhibit the demand

We just awarded a $9.8 billion contract for production of PAC-3 MSC

We just reached a handshake agreement on EOC-5 for PRISM, which we're going to produce 400 missiles for PRISM

We just took delivery of 26 last year. We're taking delivery of 54

We're going to take delivery of 100 next year and then jump up to 400. So continuing to exhibit that demand, put pressure on the defense industrial base to mobilize and to create more capacity so that they can deliver and we can fulfill our inventory requirements to make sure that we have a good global strategic presence from a fires capability perspective

We also have Lockheed Martin under contract They building 12 guided MLRS for us right now and they already on contract to build 14 the year after that

So being very aggressive about funding missile procurements in increased quantities to try to stimulate the industrial base

to produce at greater rates. Have you shifted the benchmark for some of these

There was a lot of goals that were set in the previous administration

but now there seems to be a lot more talk about ramping up further

So for something like PAC-3 MSC, what are you eyeballing or what goals are you now setting

now that you've had a better chance to look and measure where you are with stockpiles and replenishment, et cetera

and what you will need potentially for the next fight, whatever it may be

Have you moved the goals or the benchmark for some of those munition productions

Yes, we definitely have. From a PAC-3 MSE perspective, although we haven't settled on a final number

we're definitely looking at something from an annual production perspective that's north of 1,000 missiles a year

In the most recent contract that we awarded the multi-year for 2426

we have Lockheed Martin under contract to build 870 one year, moving to 1,100 the next year, and then 1,350 the year after that

So we've, from a production perspective, leveraging both U.S. investments and foreign military sales investments, we've loaded them to build north of 1,000

And that may likely increase to above 1,500 as well. But we've got to gauge the demand and get them there in a really smart, deliberate manner so we can sustain that production in the out years

I wanted to talk about the mid-range capability missile Typhon that has had a lot of attention

when it deployed to the Philippines. It also had a test shot in Australia, and now it is in Japan

Talk about what you learning from the system and what are some of the takeaways from these deployments Yeah so medium capability has been a tremendous success not only from an acquisition and fielding perspective

but also from a global strategic perspective, just as you mentioned, getting it into the Indopaycom AOR

and influencing our adversaries to take notice of what we can bring to bear from a capabilities perspective

You know, one of the best things that we can do as an acquisition community is provide our Army senior leaders with options

And that's what we did with MRC. We got it into the field very quickly through the Rapid Capability and Critical Technology Office and then transitioned over to me

We're producing Battery 3 right now. We've got Battery 1 and Battery 2 fielded

And what we've learned through those employments is that we have to become more agile

What we did was we went really fast, about three to four years, to basically prototype and produce a capability

But in doing so, we made some inefficient decisions. And one of the things we learned about MRC is that it's really big

And so we've got to make it more agile and flexible. We're an expeditionary army, so we've got to be able to employ capability very rapidly

So one of the things that we're looking at is we're working on an effort to cut the size of the battery operations center, the Bach, in half

We're going from a 40-foot container to a 20-foot container. The other thing we're doing is we're looking at the launchers, and we've instituted a new acquisition program called CAMEL, the Common Autonomous Multi-Domain Launcher

So CAMEL, in the future, will be able to host Tomahawks and SM6s

And so what we want to do with both of those initiatives, and really to the BOC too as well

I want to take a virtualized T-TWIX, I want to take a virtualized Aegis weapon system

and I want to integrate that with IBCS. So I have one BOC that has both integrated air and missile defense capabilities

well, offensive capabilities. So we want to transform what the MRC battery looks like so that it more agile flexible and employable globally All right We don have that much time so I going to ask you one more kind of involved question

You have embarked, I think you're now in year two, correct me if I'm wrong, on the integrated fires test campaign

You talked a little bit about how you're starting to think about offense, defensive fires

So what's in store coming up for the integrated fires test campaign

and what have you learned so far in your efforts to get there

Yeah, so the Integrated Fires Test Campaign has been very important to us

not only to transform how we test, but also to help the air and missile defense

and the fires community think about what composite units look like, right

So we have this tailorable capability, and so we've taken it out

We just finished up IFTIC 24. We're in the midst of finishing IFTIC 25

we'll roll into IFTIC-26. IFTIC-26, for us, will really look like a graduation event for the Guam

defense system architecture. And that's what we've been focused on right now, is this integrated air

missile defense capability for capabilities we're employing to Guam. But if you think about it

all those capabilities are tailorable to any combatant command. So I want to provide combatant

commanders with an ability to yze their forces, understand the threats that they need to

defeat and then tailor an air and missile defense and fires capability for their particular area of

responsibility. And so the if ticks have not only allowed us to test differently and write

requirements differently, but it's also emphasized the importance of integrating what used to be

disparate components of not only air and missile defense, but also long range fires. And now we're

bringing that together in a more coherent, seamless, integrated manner that will then allow

the Army to fight with units that are more flexible and employable based on the areas

they're trying to defend or the threats that they're trying to defeat

All right. Well, thank you so much, General Lozano, for joining me today. I hope you enjoy the rest of your show

Appreciate it, Jen. Thank you