The U.S. Navy will soon deploy aboard a littoral combat ship a new missile that can find and destroy enemy ships at distances of up to 100 nautical miles, service officials said.
The U.S. Navy will soon deploy aboard a littoral combat ship a new missile that can find and destroy enemy ships at distances of up to 100 nautical miles, service officials said.
Called the Naval Strike Missile, or NSM, the weapon is developed by the Norwegian-based firm Kongsberg and is currently used on Norwegian Nansen-class frigates and Skjold-Class missile torpedo boats, company officials said.
“The Navy is currently planning to utilize the Foreign Comparative Testing program to procure and install the Norwegian-built Naval Strike Missile on the USS Freedom (LCS 1). The objective is to demonstrate operationally-relevant installation, test, and real-world deployment on an LCS,” a Navy spokeswoman from Naval Sea Systems Command told Scout Warrior.
The deployment of the weapon is the next step in the missiles progress. In 2014, NSM was successfully test fired from the flight deck of the USS Coronado (LCS 4) at the Pt. Mugu Range Facility, California, demonstrating a surface-to-surface weapon capability, the Navy official explained.
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