U.S. Army Awards OTA Prototypes Contracts to Five Firms for PrSM Increment 4

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has selected five companies to develop prototypes for the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) Increment 4 program, restarting the competition for its next long‑range strike capability.

The companies — Anduril, Castelion, Lockheed Martin, RTX and Mach Industries — received Other Transaction Authority (OTA) agreements to build prototype missiles, the service announced Tuesday. The Increment 4 missile is intended to engage moving maritime and land targets at ranges of at least 1,000 km (621 miles), roughly double the range of the Army’s current PrSM baseline.

The announcement did not disclose the value of the OTAs, and a spokesperson from the Program Acquisition Executive (PAE) Fires did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Each company will develop prototype missiles that can launch from the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). An April solicitation from PAE Fires requires an open‑systems architecture—allowing operators to integrate new hardware and software—and capability to operate in the Indo‑Pacific theater as defined by the supplied operational scenario.

The five vendors will take part in a competitive fly‑off in fiscal year 2027, after which the Army will conduct its first down‑select for the program. A final fly‑off is slated for fiscal year 2028, with a final down‑select possible in fiscal year 2030, per the solicitation.

Tuesday’s announcement follows the Army’s reopening of the PrSM Increment 4 competition, after posting a new solicitation in April. The service had previously awarded contracts in 2023 to Lockheed Martin and an RTX‑Northrop Grumman team to begin development of the missile.

Lockheed and RTX did not respond to requests for comment on whether the earlier 2023 awards carried over to the new OTAs. Anduril, Castelion and Mach Industries likewise did not reply to inquiries about their proposed solutions.

In June, Lockheed highlighted its PrSM Increment 4 solution following a test at an L3Harris propulsion facility. The missile “demonstrated a flawless booster‑to‑ramjet handoff,” achieving a “pivotal advanced propulsion milestone,” according to a Lockheed press release. Full‑scale flight testing for the program was scheduled to begin this fall.

Tuesday’s announcement follows two weeks after the Army awarded Lockheed a $1.2 billion contract for its “early operational capability” PrSM Increment 2 system, which features a multimode seeker for engaging moving maritime targets. The Increment 2 capability—also known as the Land‑Based Anti‑Ship Missile seeker—is designed to operate up to 500 km (310.7 miles) in combat, as previously reported by Breaking Defense.

Additionally, the Army employed PrSM Increment 1 in combat for the first time in March during the intermittent conflict in Iran. Since then, reports indicate that the United States has used “virtually all” of its available PrSM systems.

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