defence.professionals | defpro.com: "The U.S. Army's effort to trim its modernization portfolio is starting to produce a lot of casualties outside its ranks. Earlier this year the Army decided to kill its "non-line-of-sight" launch system even though development of the program was 90 percent complete, leaving the Navy to go it alone on what was expected to be the main weapon for the sea service's future Littoral Combat Ship. Reduced demand for the launch system means the Navy will need to spend much more money for each weapon, and may ultimately have to abandon it.
Now the Army has found another candidate for termination in its air defense community, and the fallout from that program's cancellation could be more far-reaching. The program is called SLAMRAAM, which stands for "surface launched advanced medium-range air-to-air missile." Basically, it's a truck-mounted version of the same radar-guided air combat missile carried by F-15 and F-22 fighters, designed to defeat airborne threats such as helicopters, unmanned aircraft, attack planes and cruise missiles -- anything that moves slower than a ballistic missile. The Army gave Raytheon a contract in 2004 to integrate the missile with a mobile launcher, radar and fire control unit so that its combat forces could be protected against a wide array of emerging aerial threats.
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