US Air Force Issues First RFP for Weapon Specifically Intended for Ukraine

The military issues website Army Recognition reported that the US Air Force issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) to develop a new aircraft-launched weapon on Wednesday, July 10. The RFP was sent to 16 companies who had responded to an earlier Request for Interest (RFI) issued by the USAF in January with proposals to be received by July 24.

The call to industry is for a system that is being called the Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM). It explicitly says that the project is intended to support Ukrainian defense requirements by providing an efficient and affordable, autonomous long-range attack weapon.

While much of the detail of the RFP is classified or commercial-in-confidence, the outline of the requirement could be gleaned from the January RFI.

This said the ERAM is to be a 500-pound (225 kilogram)-class munition with a range of at least 250 nautical miles (290 miles / 460 kilometers) at a speed of no less than Mach 0.6 (460 mph / 740 kph). The size of the munition’s warhead wasn’t specified, other than to say it should be a high explosive fragmentation type, with some level of penetrating capability and variable fuse settings.”

Army Recognition suggests the Mark 82 unguided bomb could be considered a baseline for the ERAM weapon. The Mark 82 is a 500-pound (230 kg) filled with 196 pounds (89 kilograms) of tritonal (TNT/Al) high explosive.

It said the ERAM must include a navigation system capable of operating in a highly hostile EW environment and is to have a terminal accuracy expressed as “CEP 50 w/in 10 meters” (which means it must hit within 10 meters (33 feet) of the target at least 50 percent of the time).

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The RFP lays out the specific format for the proposals which are fairly standard for defense contracts. It calls for a two-volume response, the technical proposal and the price which should include a breakdown of all costs to determine a fair price.

Proposals must provide a clear and detailed plan to show how the contractor will meet the quantity requirement, which is laid down as 1,000 ERAM delivered within two years of the contract award. It also points out that it may award more than one contract to produce initial prototypes for assessment before full contract award.

A new precision-guided air-launched stand-off munition with a range of 250 miles would be a step up from the 40-50 miles offered by the US JDAM-ER and Small Diameter Bombs (SDB) as well as French-made HAMMER guided bomb and a more than useful adjunct to the 300-mile range offered by the Anglo-French Storm Shadow / SCALP EG cruise missile Ukraine currently holds.

ERAM would enable Ukrainian pilots the capability to engage targets at longer distances or deeper behind the front line, while also reducing their exposure to the very real threat posed by Russian air defenses. Combined with F-16 fighter aircraft as well as with Ukraine’s Soviet-era MiGs and Sukhois this would give the Ukrainian Air Force a technological advantage over Russian forces that could compensate for its numerical inferiority.

It was announced at the NATO Heads of States summit in Washington DC this week that the transfer of the first F-16 aircraft was underway.

The ERAM project is one of several recent Pentagon initiatives focused on developing new, low-cost, air-launched munitions. Earlier this year, the Navy released a similar RFI/RFP package for a “Multi-Mission Affordable Capacity Effector (MACE),” which would be a smaller, more affordable weapon designed for use by the F-35C, the naval aircraft carrier compatible version of the Lightning II.