Kongsberg lands $896 million deal for Naval Strike Missile

By Sam Cranny-Evans, published 14th November 2024. 

Norwegian company Kongsberg has secured an $896 million (approx EUR850 million) deal to provide its Naval Strike Missile (NSM) to the US Navy and the US Marine Corps (USMC) over the next five years, marking the largest missile order the company has ever received, according to a 12th November press release. 

The contract is valued at a fixed price of 10 billion Norwegian krone (NOK) with options for up to NOK12 billion, which is the equivalent to slightly over a billion US dollars or euros. It covers delivery of the company’s NSM which is designed to provide precision strike at ranges over 185 km against ships and land targets. It will equip the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships and Constellation-class Frigates as well as the USMC’s NMESIS (Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System) – a unique missile launcher based on an uncrewed and extensively modified Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV). 

“This contract is an example of the strong demand we see for our strike missiles across NATO and allied nations, which is why we this year have opened a new missile factory in Norway and announced two facilities in Australia and the US,” said Eirik Lie, President of Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace. It will also generate stability in the company’s supply chains, he added, which is a very important factor for NATO. Decades of under-spend for munitions in particular have created supply chains that are designed to meet a minimal projected demand, which means they are not very resistant to shocks like a sudden increase in orders. So, a stable and significant demand over five years, not to mention Kongsberg’s other NSM contracts, will help those suppliers in the lower tiers of the supply chain plan for the future and build capacity. 

The NSM has considerable export success and was also at the heart of Kongsberg’s largest single order ever with Poland signing an NOK16 billion (approx $1.5 billion) contract in 2023 for four squadrons of the NSM Coastal Defence System. That deal was financed by Export Finance Norway (Eksfin) in November 2023, deliveries are expected into the 2030s. However, that deal included launch vehicles and an array of sensors and command systems – the US order is for just for missile stocks. It is difficult to tell how many missiles this deal will cover, most previous orders for other customers have been in the region of 300 – 600 million dollars and the number of missiles delivered is rarely revealed. 

A short video from the USMC showing the NMESIS vehicle and effects of the NSM on a ship. Credit: Marine Corps Systems Command. 

However, it is known that the US Navy has contracted for six of the Constellation class frigates with Fincantieri Marinette Marine, which indicates as many as 16 NSMs per ship and a possible 96 missiles if no further ships are procured. The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) programme has been troubled and subject to a lot of revisions, but in 2015, Rear Admiral, Pete Fanta who was the director of surface warfare at the Pentagon at the time,  issued a directive calling for eight over-the-horizon missiles to be fitted to the USS Freedom and USS Coronado – although both were later retired. The US Navy retains 25 LCS in service, but has plans for a further nine to be decommissioned on top of five that have already been phased out of service. This could indicate a potential requirement for NSM on 16 vessels – another 128 missiles, perhaps. 

For the USMC, each NMESIS vehicle can carry two NSM, but the low rate initial production contract was only signed in May this year. Naval News indicates that a NMESIS battery will consist of 18 launchers and that the USMC plans to procure 14 batteries in total. This indicates a total of 252 vehicles, each carrying two missiles for an additional total of 504 NSMs. Altogether, this rough analysis indicates that the US could require up to 728 of the Kongsberg missiles just to equip its platforms with a single load out. Of course, the assumption here is that all of these programmes continue as planned and are fully resources. 

Nevertheless, NSM will represent a significant uplift in the US Navy’s ability to engage adversary vessels and land targets. It has been procured under a programme called Over-The-Horizon Weapons System (OTH-WS), with a first live fire test from the USS Fitzgerald (a littoral combat ship) conducted in 2021 following an integration contract awarded to Raytheon in 2018. OTH-WS is designed to make the US Navy more lethal by putting more weapons on more ships. They are expected to be combined with effects from the USMC, which anticipates deploying NMESIS to islands and holding enemy ships at risk from different, unexpected locations. 

Moreover, the Kongsberg factory in the US will be able to contribute to production and maintenance of the missiles throughout their service life, adding capacity to the West’s supply chains. 

Tech profile: Naval Strike Missile 

The Naval Strike Missile has been selected by 15 nations and it is understood to be already in service with at least five, which indicates that the NSM’s growth in production and service use is yet to come. It is primarily designed as an anti-ship missile with a range in excess of 185 km. It employs an infrared imaging seeker for target detection and engagement, according to Kongsberg. 

It is designed to fly a sea-skimming profile and is armed with a 120 kg high explosive, armour piercing and fragmentation warhead. It is fitted with a titanium alloy warhead casing that has an intelligent fuze designed to detect voids and initiate the warhead. The total missile weight is 407 kg and they fly at a high subsonic speed – typically between 270 and 300 metres per second – employing a mixture of stealth and intelligent flight path planning to evade a ship’s defences. 

The missile has a thrust to weight ratio and is capable of manoeuvring at speed to complicate the job of air defences. This is coupled with the passive seeker, which reduces the signals that a ship can detect and jam to improve overall survivability against an opponent’s air defences.   

Calibre comment

The US military is working hard to employ multi-domain capabilities so that it can use its limited stocks of weapons and platforms more effectively. NSM will be no exception to this paradigm and its efficacy will depend to no small extent on the ability of the US military to fuse sensor inputs from space-based reconnaissance systems, drones, and crewed aircraft gathering signals intelligence, as well as all other forms of targeting information. Success in this endeavour will be critical to the US Navy’s ability to operate and survive in a potential war in the Indo-Pacific. You can read more about how the US Navy is integrating drones for reconnaissance and how the US Army is looking and crewed platforms to integrate space-based intelligence on Calibre: https://www.calibredefence.co.uk/us-navy-takes-another-step-toward-unmanned-carrier-aviation/ and https://www.calibredefence.co.uk/deep-strike-northrop-grumman-demonstrates-dsat-system-for-us-army/