The US Navy’s DMLGB Program
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“Dual guidance” bombs are becoming popular. They cost more, but deliver on versatility once all that money has been spent to get its carrying aircraft into position. GPS/INS guidance gives them the ability to bomb through sandstorm, fog, or other obscurement; or from high altitude, or without active targeting. Laser guidance adds other advantages, including improved accuracy and the ability to moving targets that have been “painted” by a laser designator. Britain’s Paveway-IV project, France’s recent retrofits, Boeing’s LJDAM, and Raytheon’s Enhanced Paveway family weapons all fall into this category. So, too, does RAFAEL’s Spice, though it uses a combination of GPS/INS and imaging infared (IIR). In October 2008, US Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) added another entry when PMA-201 Precision Strike Weapons delivered the first Dual-Mode Laser-Guided Bomb (DMLGB) to the Fleet. The weapons will equip USMC AV-8B Harriers, and USMC and US Navy F/A-18A-D Hornets. Integration is also planned for the US Navy’s F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets, and could be undertaken with any aircraft that had appropriate carriage capacity and a MIL-STD 1760 databus.
DMLGB was a US Navy and Marine Corps program, which began in 2005 as a result of an urgent operational request to prosecute targets in poor weather conditions, or when a lack of continuous targeting data is available for other reasons. Rather than building a new weapon, however, the Navy/USMC request wanted a vendor to modify Paveway laser guidance kits already in inventory, in order to make them dual-guidance weapons. Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are the 2 producers of Paveway guidance kits, and Lockheed Martin won the ensuing competition. In November 2005, they received a $65.2 million contract that included both First Article Acceptance Testing, and conditional production.
First rollout of production deliveries was in September 2007, and in 2008 a PMA-201 team tested 25 DMLGBs on F/A-18 Hornets and AV-8B Harriers in various conditions. The tests were deemed successful, demonstrating the ability to strike vertical and horizontal targets with precision at close-in and extended ranges. Initial Operational Capability was declared in January 2009, and a total of 7,000 modified kits are expected by 2010. At that point, the DMLGB program is expected to close itself out, having fulfilled the forces’ requirement. See also: NAVAIR release.
