U.S. Army soldiers have begun fielding a new upgrade to the military’s premier portable anti-tank missile.
The Javelin Joint Venture (JJV), a partnership between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, announced May 26 that it had turned over the first batch of Lightweight Command Launch Units (LWCLU) to the Army. The LWCLU takes over for the Block I command launch unit, the sighting and firing interface that soldiers use to lock on to enemy vehicles and positions before firing the Javelin.
“The production and delivery of the LWCLU marks a pivotal step in modernizing the Javelin system for today’s warfighter,” said Rich Liccion, JJV vice president and Lockheed Martin Javelin program director, in a statement issued by RTX. “Its innovative design enhances mobility and survivability while preserving the precision firepower that users rely on.”
Troops have carried the Block I CLU since the Javelin first entered service in 1996. This is the first major overhaul of that hardware in the weapon system’s entire three-decade history.
Raytheon, an RTX business, built the new unit to be backward- and forward-compatible, meaning it can fire every Javelin missile variant the military has ever fielded or plans to produce. The company has put $22 million into retooling its assembly line in Tucson, Ariz., while working with the Army to scale up output.
Military.com reached out to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon for comment.
LWCLU Specs and Upgrades
Compared with the Block I unit it replaces, the LWCLU sheds a quarter of the weight and nearly a third of the bulk.
Its upgraded optics can spot and identify targets at twice the distance, even as the system operates in both daylight and darkness. Beyond launching missiles, the LWCLU can also function as a standalone surveillance tool for infantry squads on patrol.
The modern battlefield looks different compared to the original CLU designed in the early 1990s. Modern tank formations and artillery systems can strike infantry positions from well beyond the distances that the Block I sensors could scan, for example, meaning that anti-armor teams sometimes found themselves out-ranged by the vehicles they were supposed to ambush and destroy.
The updated LWCLU now sees further and gives those teams a better chance to fire first.
Soldiers who ran the LWCLU through operational testing at Yuma Proving Ground in 2023 in Arizona said the jump in capability was obvious from the first use.
“In the lightweight you can tell a major difference; you can scan out farther with higher clarity. Everything was crystal clear. It is like watching television in high definition as opposed to TV in the 90s,” Army Staff Sgt. Tom Magsino, a weapons squad leader with 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, said in a statement through the Army website.
Army Cpl. Collin Iadarola, an infantryman in the same unit, said in a statement that the resolution let him pick out details on vehicles that the old system could not render at range.
“You can tell how many tires it has, sometimes lettering on the side, suspension, turret size, track size; it’s far superior to Block 1,” Iadarola said.
Soldiers also praised the reduced footprint and a new autofocus feature that cuts seconds of manual adjustment under pressure. Magsino said the LWCLU fits in an assault pack, while the Block I barely squeezed into a full rucksack by itself.
“It’s in the name, Lightweight CLU,” Iadarola said. “Lighter, easier on the back. I’d pick it over the Block 1 any day.”
Army Col. Jonathan S. Bender, director of the Maneuver Test Directorate at the Army Operational Test Command, said the LWCLU would shape the weapon system for a generation.
“The original Javelin CLU system came out in 1995,” Bender said in a statement. “The LW CLU update is the first major update to the system in over 25 years and this update will probably form the basis for the system for the next 25 years.”
Contracts, Production and Global Demand
The first fielded units stem from two contracts worth a combined $267 million that the Army signed with the Javelin Joint Venture in October 2024. The deals cover both full- and low-rate initial production runs and include foreign military sales to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Javelins replaced the M47 Dragon in the mid-1990s as the Army and Marine Corps’ primary portable anti-armor weapon. The 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment was the first unit to receive the system in June 1996.
The system gives infantry a weapon they can fire from the shoulder, from atop a vehicle or from inside a building. Its soft-launch design produces minimal backblast. The missile’s top-attack flight profile strikes the thinner armor on a tank’s topside, but soldiers can also switch to a direct-fire mode against fortified positions or targets under overhead cover.
In the three decades since its debut, the fire-and-forget missile has been used in more than 5,000 engagements, seeing significant use in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also became a symbol of Ukraine’s resistance to Russian armor after the full-scale invasion in 2022.
More than 25 nations currently field the system, while the military expects it to remain in service through 2050.
The joint venture has built more than 50,000 missiles and more than 12,000 reusable launch units throughout its history. Lockheed Martin, which handles missile assembly in Orlando, Fla., is scaling its line from a capacity of 2,400 rounds per year to nearly 4,000 by the end of 2026 to keep pace with global demand.
To support that increase, the joint venture’s supply chain of roughly 100 component vendors and about 25 major subcontractors has spent much of the past year expanding capacity with new tooling and production infrastructure. Lockheed Martin has been adding new missile test stations at its Pike County Production Facility in Troy, Ala., to support the higher output rate.
“Delivering the first LWCLUs to the U.S. Army reflects the Javelin Joint Venture’s commitment to continuously advancing technology for service members,” Jenna Hunt Frazier, JJV president and Javelin program director at Raytheon, said. “Our investments in modernization and production capacity ensures soldiers receive this cutting-edge capability faster.”
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