Boeing Defense is increasing production of its joint direct attack munition (JDAM) guidance kit to meet the demand for precision-guided weapons in Middle East battle zones. The manufacturer is churning out 119 tail kits daily from its facility in St. Charles, Mo., where it recently initiated a second shift. Plans call for producing 150 tail kits daily by next summer.
“There is probably no other product that today is as in demand as this product is by our U.S. and international warfighters,” said Beth Kluba, Boeing Defense vice president for weapons and missile systems. “Almost all of the weapons that are being deployed right now in the Middle East conflict are precision-guided munitions and most of those are the JDAM product.”
The JDAM kit converts unguided, free-fall bombs into precision guided smart weapons by adding a new tail section containing inertial guidance and GPS systems, with structural body strakes for stability and lift. Boeing Defense received its first contract to supply the tail kits in 1997 as an urgent operational capability. The manufacturer has produced more than 250,000 tail kits and this year plans to celebrate its 300,000th unit.
In August, the U.S. Air Force issued a sources sought notice for JDAM “Production Lots 23 Plus,” stating that it was “surveying the market to determine if alternate sources exist” to supply the tail kits for the USAF, the U.S. Navy and foreign military sales customers.
“We’re keeping our options open,” Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told reporters during a Pentagon briefing in August. The service was “working with Boeing actively” to expand production capacity, she said. “We’re working with other industry partners who are involved with ammunition and precision weapons as well,” James added. “[W]e’re at least exploring these other options.”
Briefing reporters at the St. Charles facility on September 12, Kluba said Boeing has ramped up JDAM production three times to support the demand, increasing it by 80 percent last year. The manufacturer is assembling a dozen variations of the tail kit, ranging from tail kits for 500-pound Mk 82 series bombs to tail kits for 2,000-pound Mk 84 bombs, and including laser-guided, long-range and deep-penetration variants.
Compared to a high-end fighter assembly line, the JDAM program is more like an automobile production line, said Boeing’s Jeffrey Meywes. “Here we’re cranking out Chevrolets—75 (per shift) a day to as many as 30 different customers,” he said. “I want to say basically that we can support whatever the government throws at us.”
Both Kluba and Meywes were confident that Boeing can continue supplying JDAM tail kits as needed to the U.S. military. It is committed to producing 36,500 tail kits per year under its current contract, and by adding a third shift could scale up to nearly 50,000 units annually “if that’s what the customer requires," Kluba said.
