Seeking Guidance, Together

Lockheed Martin and the Air Force Research Laboratory will team-up to further develop the company’s cooled tri-mode seeker to guide future aerial weapons, announced Lockheed. “We are pleased the US Air Force is interested in further evaluating our tri-mode seeker and pushing it to its operational limits,” said Frank St. John, tactical missiles vice president at Lockheed. Combining infrared, millimeter-wave radar, and laser instruments into a single guidance package, the self-cooled version, which AFRL and Lockheed signed a five-year cooperative agreement to develop, is the technology’s fourth iteration. The first generation tri-mode seeker was initiated in 2001 under the canceled Common Missile program. St. John added, “We have continued developing and testing our seeker hardware and software for other customers and applications since the end of the Small Diameter Bomb II competition, and we look forward to demonstrating our mature seeker still offers superior effectiveness at the best value.”