Navy to Arm F-35C-JSOW-C1 Air-Launch Weapon

by Kris Osborn

The Navy is arming its entire fleet with a new air-launched, precision-guided missile able to use a two-way data-link to identify and destroy moving targets at sea, service officials said.

Called the AMG-154 Joint Standoff Weapon, or JSOW, the Raytheon-built attack bomb uses GPS technology, inertial measurement unit guidance technology and an imaging infrared seeker in the final phase of flight to find and attack enemy targets.

“The weapon is integrated with a Link 16 network radio, enabling it to engage moving targets at sea. The radio allows the launch aircraft or another designated controller to provide real-time target updates to the weapon in flight or reassign the weapon to another target. It also uses GPS/INS and an infrared seeker for terminal guidance,” NAVAIR spokeswoman Jamie Cosgrove told Scout Warrior in a statement.

The Joint Stand-Off Weapon C-1 achieved operational status in June of last year and is now deployed with all Navy Air Wings, Cosgrove said.

The new technology gives fighters such as the F/A-18 Super Hornet a vastly increased attack envelope against a wider range of threats such as enemy ships, small boats on-the-move. Moving forward, the JSOW C-1 will be fired from the Navy’s carrier-launched variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, the F-35C.

While historically used as a land-attack weapon launched from air-platforms such as fighter jets, new technology allows the JSOW weapon to use the LINK 16 data-link to identify and kill moving maritime targets at sea from ranges as far at 70-miles, Navy officials told Scout Warrior.

The JSOW C-1 Moving Maritime Target capability allows the weapon to fly to an updated cue from its controlling platform, then transition to an image recognition/matching process enabled by an onboard database of ship characteristics stored in the weapon, Navy officials said.