By Joe Brock <\/p>\n
FARNBOROUGH, England, July 20 (Reuters) – Lockheed Martin announced a lower-cost Patriot interceptor on Monday as militaries seek cheaper ways to \u200ccounter drones and missiles, while defense contractors face competition from startups \u200cmaking low-cost weapons that can be produced at scale. <\/p>\n
Lockheed said its new PAC-3 Adapted Capability \u200bEffector, or ACE, missile would cost less than half as much as its PAC-3 MSE interceptors, which cost roughly $4 million per missile, according to U.S. Army budget documents. <\/p>\n
Initial production could start within 36 months, the company said, adding that it \u200cplans to develop and \u2060manufacture the weapon with U.S. and European industry partners. <\/p>\n
“American and allied warfighters need a solution that is battle-tested and budget-smart,” \u2060Tim Cahill, president of Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said in a statement at Britain’s Farnborough Airshow. <\/p>\n
The location of the announcement underscores efforts by U.S. defense companies \u200bto tap \u200ba European rearmament boom fueled by \u200bRussia’s war in Ukraine, even as \u200cEuropean governments seek to reduce dependence on American suppliers and expand local defense manufacturing. <\/p>\n
The Patriot system has become one of the world’s most sought-after air-defense weapons since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv credits Patriot batteries with helping defend cities against Russian ballistic missile attacks, while President Volodymyr Zelenskiy \u200chas repeatedly appealed for more launchers and interceptors \u200bas Moscow intensifies air strikes. <\/p>\n
Demand has also \u200bbeen driven by missile exchanges \u200bbetween Iran, the United States and Israel and wider instability \u200cin the Gulf, stretching supplies of \u200badvanced air-defense weapons and \u200bexposing production bottlenecks throughout the Western defense industry. <\/p>\n
The launch of a cheaper interceptor by Lockheed underscores how established defense contractors are responding to \u200bmounting competition from Silicon \u200cValley-backed startups that promise to deliver weapons faster, in greater numbers \u200band at a fraction of the cost of traditional systems. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bJoe Brock; Editing by Sharon Singleton) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Joe Brock FARNBOROUGH, England, July 20 (Reuters) – Lockheed Martin announced a lower-cost Patriot interceptor on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1284,14,290,2374,261],"class_list":["post-3856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-air-defense","tag-defence-industry","tag-defense-contractors","tag-interceptors","tag-lockheed-martin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/defence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}