The U.S. Air Force has taken another deliberate step toward giving its F-35A fleet a true long-range, internal-carriage strike option.
On December 12, 2025, the service awarded Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace a $240.9 million firm-fixed-price contract for Joint Strike Missile (JSM) Lot Two production, according to a notice highlighted by Army Recognition. The award is funded through fiscal 2024 and 2025 procurement missile appropriations and covers everything from missiles to containers, test hardware, and support equipment.
What Lot Two actually buys
This is not a one-off missile purchase. Lot Two is structured as a dedicated production batch that bundles the weapons themselves with the infrastructure needed to move them from the factory floor toward operational units.
Under the contract, Kongsberg will produce:
- All-up-round Joint Strike Missiles
- Containers and handling gear
- Test hardware and support equipment required for acceptance and early fielding
All work will be performed in Norway, with completion planned by November 30, 2028.
On the funding side, the Air Force has obligated $137,970,866 from fiscal 2024 procurement missile accounts and $102,933,232 from fiscal 2025 funds. Planning documents tie FY 2024 money to up to 48 JSM all-up rounds and FY 2025 funds to up to 50 rounds, alongside the associated gear.
Gross weapon system costs are listed at about $161.0 million in FY 2024 and $165.9 million in FY 2025, with notional unit costs in the $3.3 million per-missile range. The Air Force flags the usual caveats: totals may not sum perfectly due to rounding, and actual quantities can shift under a buy-to-budget approach depending on negotiated pricing and available funding.
Why the F-35A needs JSM
The Joint Strike Missile is designed from the outset as a long-range, air-launched precision weapon capable of engaging both maritime and land targets. Crucially, it is optimized for internal carriage on the F-35, including the U.S. Air Force’s F-35A variant.
JSM is derived from Norway’s Naval Strike Missile (NSM) but has been adapted for the F-35’s weapons bays and for broader mission flexibility. U.S. industry partners, including Raytheon, contribute to integration and production.
Internal carriage matters because it preserves the F-35’s low-observable profile while still letting the jet carry a credible stand-off strike capability. That combination is especially important against:
- Heavily defended coastal or inland targets
- Integrated air defense systems with modern sensors and shooters
- Environments where electronic warfare and countermeasures are expected
In those settings, a stealthy aircraft like the F-35A carrying internally stowed, network-enabled weapons provides commanders with options that are much harder to replicate with legacy platforms.
How the missile works
On the technical side, JSM combines several guidance and survivability features that make it more than just another cruise missile.
Key characteristics include:
- Guidance: A blend of inertial navigation, GPS, and terrain-referenced navigation, allowing for low-level, terrain-following flight profiles.
- Terminal seeker: An imaging infrared seeker for high-fidelity target recognition and discrimination in the endgame.
- Datalink: A two-way datalink that supports in-flight updates and retargeting.
- Passive RF homing: A passive radio-frequency mode that lets the missile home in on radar emitters such as air defense fire-control radars, early warning radars, and engagement radars.
Physically, the missile weighs around 416 kg, is roughly 4 meters long, and carries a 120 kg blast-fragmentation warhead. It is powered by a Williams International F-415 small turbofan engine, with an estimated top speed near Mach 0.9.
Range varies by flight profile:
- Around 555 km in a hi–hi–lo trajectory
- More than 350 km in other mixed profiles
- Roughly 185 km in a lo–lo–lo profile
Those numbers keep the launch aircraft well outside many surface-to-air missile engagement zones while still giving planners flexible routing options.
Scaling up inventory, with limits
Program planning around Lot Two suggests an eventual inventory objective of around 240 all-up rounds, with current projections indicating the ability to buy approximately 204 missiles across funded lots. That gap could close or widen depending on pricing, budgets, and how aggressively the Air Force prioritizes JSM against other munitions programs.
Some of the contract value also goes to non-recurring engineering and support. That includes:
- Contractor personnel and travel to support post–F-35A testing and integration
- Cybersecurity and network-integration work for the missile and aircraft
- One-time items such as adapters, cables, and loading cradles, which taper off in later production phases
The broader roadmap ties JSM fielding to upgrades in the F-35’s network-enabled weapons suite, effectively folding the missile into a larger push to make the jet a flexible, data-driven strike platform rather than just a stealthy bomb truck.
Timeline: from contract to combat credibility
Scheduling details released alongside the Lot Two contract show how missile production dovetails with the F-35A’s test and evaluation cycle.
- Developmental test and evaluation for JSM integration on the F-35A is projected to wrap up around September 2025.
- Operational test and evaluation is expected to start in May 2026, validating how the weapon performs in more realistic, mission-like scenarios.
- Initial deliveries from the FY 2024 production line are planned for around May 2026, with the FY 2025 line following in March 2027.
That pacing essentially means that through the latter half of this decade, the Air Force is steadily moving from integration and testing into credible operational fielding of the Joint Strike Missile on the F-35A.
Taken together, the Lot Two award is not just another line item in the munitions budget. It is a signal that the Air Force is committed to giving its fifth-generation fighters a long-range, precise, and survivable strike option that fits the environments they are most likely to face.
