Jane Edwards
Raytheon and the U.S. Navy have wrapped up two flight tests of the Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile at the Naval Air Systems Command’s sea test range off the coast of Southern California in order to demonstrate how service personnel can plan missions against time-sensitive enemy targets.
The service branch launched a pair of Tomahawk missiles with warheads from the USS Pinckney (DDG 91) Arleigh Burke-class destroyer’s vertical launch platform, Raytheon said Wednesday.
The ship’s crew found that the weapon adhered to a pre-planned route during the initial test flight after they used the Tactical Tomahawk Weapons Control System’s launch platform mission planning tool to produce flight plans based on information from the U.S. Fleet Command in Virginia.
Crew members used the Tomahawk control platform’s LPMP functionality in the second test to produce a flight plan for longer duration and then carried out a terminal dive maneuver to strike the target.
The Raytheon-built Tomahawk cruise missile is designed to be launched from a ship or submarine at a range of 1,000 miles to strike integrated air defense platforms as well as fixed, mobile and high-value targets.
Since 2006, the Navy has performed at least 75 flight tests of Tomahawk that has been used over 2,000 times in combat.
