MISSILE DEVELOPMENT: TSSAM Production Should Not Be Started as Planned

The Tri-Service Standoff Attack Missile TSSAM program is a 14.5 billion program to develop and acquire a common, low observable, medium range, conventional cruise missile for the AiMr Force, Army, and Navy. The TSSAM system has been in development for 7 years. This program has a history of development problems, cost growth, and schedule delays. Congressional committees have continually expressed concerns about the TSSAM development program. As a result of this interest and the significant cost and tactical importance of this system, we reviewed the programs progress and its readiness to enter low rate initial production. We also reviewed progress made to address past development problems and identified new issues and challenges meriting congressional attention. This is an unclassified summary of a classified report we recently issued. Since 1986, Northrop Corporation, Aircraft Division, Hawthorne California, the primary contractor, has been developing the family of missiles under a fixed-price incentive fee contract. Four missile variants are being developed that have many common components but somewhat different avionics and munitions. Two variants have precision terminal guldance systems to achieve pinpoint accuracy. The other two variants dispense submunitions to attack area targets or armored vehicles. The services plan to buy 6,650 missiles and begin low-rate initial production in 1995. To this end, the Air Force requested 195.9 million for fiscal year 1994 to buy long lead items for one of the four variants.