Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace AS (KONGSBERG) has received an order from Raytheon Missiles & Defense for Naval Strike Missiles (NSM) to the US Navy Over-The-Horizon Weapon System (OTH WS) program worth MNOK 328. Raytheon is prime contractor to the US Navy. The order is related to the OTH WS framework agreement announced 31 May 2018 with a total cumulative scope of BNOK 7.8. So far, KONGSBERG has received orders for MNOK 1 762 under this framework agreement. The NSM is an anti-ship and land-attack missile developed by the Norwegian company Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace.
The original Norwegian name was Nytt sjømålsmissil (literally New sea target missile). The English marketing name Naval Strike Missile was adopted later. It is the successor of the Penguin AGM-119 anti-ship missile. According to Kongsberg the NSM/JSM is selected by Norway, Poland, Malaysia, Germany, the United States (as RGM-184), Japan, Romania, Canada, Australia and Spain as of 2022. The NSM is to be used by the U.S. Marine Corps as part of the Navy/Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS), which places an NSM launcher unit on an unmanned JLTV-based mobile launch platform to enable the Marines to fire anti-ship missiles from land.
“We register a significant increase in the annual call-offs. This creates jobs and demand for increased production capacity, both for us and our suppliers. As announced at KONGSBERG’s CMD in June, the company has started a significant investment in a new missile factory,” says Director of the Missile Systems division Øyvind Kolset.
The design and use of composite materials is meant to give the missile sophisticated stealth capabilities. The missile will weigh slightly more than 400 kg (880 lb) and have a range of more than 185 km (115 mi; 100 nmi). NSM is designed for littoral waters as well as for open sea scenarios. The usage of a high strength titanium alloy blast/fragmentation warhead from TDW is in line with the modern lightweight design and features insensitive high-explosive. Warhead initiation is by a void-sensing Programmable Intelligent Multi-Purpose Fuze designed to optimise effect against hard targets. NSM is able to fly over and around landmasses, travel in sea skim mode, and then make random manoeuvres in the terminal phase, making it harder to stop by enemy countermeasures.
