Sources are listed in full at the end. Contract figures come from Department of War announcements; quantities, unit costs and the lot schedule come from the Air Force FY2027 missile procurement justification book, line item JSM000.
The $240.9 million Joint Strike Missile Lot Two entry in the Pentagon’s 5 June contracts list had already been announced six months earlier. The entry was a duplicate, withdrawn four days later and replaced with a different and larger action.
Three production lots now sit on a single sole-source instrument worth $620 million. Reading the announcements against the Air Force’s own budget book settles several figures that circulate in incompatible versions, and produces something neither document offers alone: a per-round price for missiles the Air Force has never published a price for.
- Contractor
- Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace, Norway
- Contracting activity
- AFLCMC, Eglin AFB, Florida
- Type
- Firm-fixed-price, sole source
- Lots on the vehicle
- Two, Three, Three B
- Cumulative face value
- $620,031,548
- Work performed
- Kongsberg, Norway
- Runs to
- 30 June 2030
- Funds obligated
- FY2024 $138.2M · FY2025 $481.9M · FY2026 none
What does not add up
- The $240.9 million Lot Two entry was published twice, in December 2025 and again on 5 June 2026, word for word. The Department withdrew the repeat four days later.
- The real 5 June action was a $280.7 million modification for Lot Three.
- The modification sequence runs base, P00001, P00003. There is no P00002 in the public record.
- What the announcements call Lot Three and Lot Three B is one lot in the budget book, funded as a single 100-round buy.
- Lot One is commonly cited at $141 million. The announcement puts it at $138,424,794, and the two follow-on figures attached to it are one transaction rather than two.
- The announcements state no quantities and no prices. The budget book states both, and the two records reconcile to within two percent.
What happened on 5 June
The Department of War’s contract announcements for 5 June 2026 carried an entry for Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace: a $240,904,098 firm-fixed-price, sole-source award for Joint Strike Missile Lot Two production, covering all-up rounds with containers, test hardware and support items, performed at Kongsberg, Norway, with completion expected 30 November 2028. Contract number FA8681-26-C-B002.
That entry had already been published. It appeared in the Pentagon’s 12 December 2025 announcements, and the two texts are not merely similar. They match word for word: same company address, same figure, same completion date, same sole-source sentence, same funding split.
The correction, published in the 9 June announcements, states that the 5 June Kongsberg entry duplicated a previously announced contract and supplies the actual action: a $280,715,050 firm-fixed-price modification, P00001, to FA8681-26-C-B002 for Joint Strike Missile Lot Three production, running through 31 December 2029, funded with $195,464 in FY2024 and $280,519,586 in FY2025 procurement missile funds.
Two mechanical details are worth noting, because they describe how the daily announcements work rather than how anyone read them.
The entire Air Force section of the 5 June list consisted of this single entry, so that day’s Air Force release was wholly erroneous rather than one bad line among several.
And the correction was published as part of a later day’s list rather than folded back into the 5 June page, which still carries the duplicate. Anyone opening it today sees the withdrawn entry with nothing to indicate that it was withdrawn. The daily announcements are a publication, not a database, and a correction issued on one page does not alter another.
The corrected ledger
| Action | Announced | Value | Instrument |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lot One | May 2024 | $138,424,794 | FA8681-24-C-B005 (UCA) |
| Lot One definitized | 24 Jan 2025 | +$69,526,295 | PZ0002 |
| Lot Two | 12 Dec 2025 | $240,904,098 | FA8681-26-C-B002 |
| Lot Two republished | 5 Jun 2026 | — | duplicate, withdrawn |
| Lot Three | 5 Jun 2026 | $280,715,050 | P00001 |
| Lot Three B | 15 Jul 2026 | $98,412,400 | P00003 |
The archived December list is headed “Contracts For December 4, 2025”, but that header contradicts its own contents. It includes an item marked as awarded 11 December, a modification running to 11 December 2028, and a five-year no-option contract whose ordering period ends 12 December 2030. The announcement is 12 December, which like the 5 June repeat fell on a Friday, the day the weekly backlog clears.
Lot One’s value settles a smaller confusion. The January announcement gives the pre-modification face value as $138,424,794, which puts the $141 million figure in circulation about $2.6 million high. The reported $69.5 million order and the $70 million change order raising the total to $208 million are the same transaction described twice: $138,424,794 plus $69,526,295 comes to $207,951,089.
Three lots, one instrument, and a missing link
Lot Three is not a separate contract, and neither is Lot Three B. Both are modifications to the Lot Two vehicle, whose cumulative face value is now $620,031,548. The Air Force is buying successive lots by growing a single sole-source instrument rather than competing or re-awarding.
- base
- Lot Two · $240,904,098
- P00001
- Lot Three · $280,715,050
- P00002
- never announced · value unknown
- P00003
- Lot Three B · $98,412,400
That is the likeliest explanation for the gap, and it is a benign one. The point that survives it is narrower: the public contract record has a hole in it, and any order-book model built on the announcements alone inherits that limit.
The instrument has also changed shape. Lot One was awarded as an undefinitized contract action, meaning work authorised before price was agreed, and was not definitized until January 2025, eight months later. Lot Two was firm-fixed-price from the outset, on a new vehicle, with Lot Three priced into it as a modification.
Prior-year money, and a label that misleads
Lot Two obligated $137,970,866 in FY2024 funds and $102,933,232 in FY2025. Lot Three obligated $195,464 in FY2024 and $280,519,586 in FY2025. Lot Three B obligated $98,412,400, all of it FY2025, and the three sum exactly to the vehicle’s face value of $620,031,548.
Lot Three’s FY2024 share is $195,464, or 0.07 percent of the action. A residual of that size is not a funding plan. It reads as a sweep of a leftover balance into the nearest available obligation before expiry, and FY2024 procurement funds carry three-year availability that lapses at the end of FY2026.
The larger point is what the year labels conceal. No FY2026 money appears anywhere on these contracts, which invites the reading that the program received none. It received $377 million, and the next section shows where it went.
What the budget book publishes
The contract announcements state no quantities. That has been read as meaning the quantities are not public. They are, and they sit where contract coverage does not reach: the production schedule exhibit of the Air Force’s FY2027 missile procurement justification book, line item JSM000.
| Lot | Award | Rounds | Funding | Deliveries |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lot 1 | May 2025 | 64 | FY2024 | Jun 2026 – May 2027 |
| Lot 2 | Dec 2025 | 80 | 47 FY2024, 33 FY2025 | Dec 2027 – Nov 2028 |
| Lot 3 | May 2026, planned | 100 | FY2025 reconciliation | Feb 2030 – Jan 2031 |
| Lot 4 | May 2027, planned | 100 | FY2027 | Feb 2030 – Jan 2031 |
| Lot 5 | May 2028, planned | 41 | FY2028 | Mar 2031 – Feb 2032 |
Three things follow immediately. The budget book has no Lot Three B: it has a Lot 3 of 100 rounds funded with FY2025 reconciliation money. The two contract actions announced as Lot Three and Lot Three B come to $379,127,450 between them, against a $377 million FY2026 spend plan for the line. They are one budget lot split across two contract modifications.
The absence of FY2026 money from the announcements is a labeling artifact rather than a funding gap. The justification book says so directly: FY2026 money was distributed as FY2025 reconciliation funds carrying 2025 to 2029 availability. It is in Lot 3. It is simply not called FY2026 on the contract.
And with quantities in hand, the contracts yield a price.
Lot Three + Three B $379,127,450 ÷ 100 = $3.79M Against the budget book’s own gross weapon system unit cost of $3.773 million for FY2025 rounds and $3.846 million for FY2027. Two records kept by different offices for different purposes, agreeing to within two percent.
Lot Two sits lower than either figure because its 80 rounds were funded across two years at different prices, so its average is not comparable to a single-year number. The reconciliation that matters is Lot Three, where a contract action and a budget line describe the same 100 missiles and land two percent apart.
How long the program runs
The same line item carries the out-years. The Air Force shows 100 rounds in FY2027 at $384.607 million and 41 in FY2028 at $179.563 million, then zero in FY2029, FY2030, FY2031 and in the column for work still to complete. The discretionary line totals 283 rounds and $1.049 billion; adding Lot 3’s 100 reconciliation-funded rounds brings the planned buy to roughly 385.
Unit cost moves the wrong way at the end. The book gives $3.846 million per round in FY2027 and $4.380 million in FY2028, a rise of 14 percent. That is what a short final lot costs when fixed overheads are spread across 41 units instead of 100, and it is the arithmetic signature of a program winding down rather than scaling up.
Operational test and evaluation is projected to begin in October 2027, subject to completion of Norwegian and F-35 program office development testing forecast for December 2026. The Air Force expects to field a missile it has largely finished buying before it has finished testing it, which follows from leveraging another country’s integration work rather than being a criticism of that choice.
Reconciling Kongsberg’s own numbers
On 8 June 2026 Kongsberg announced a contract for further JSM deliveries to the US Air Force worth about NOK 2.7 billion, roughly €250 million, with deliveries expected to complete by the end of 2029. The figure has been read against Lot Two, but on both delivery horizon and currency conversion it fits Lot Three better.
€250M ≈ ~$285M
Lot Two $240.9M Lot Three $280.7M Rate implied by Kongsberg’s own 30 June announcement, which states NOK 4.7bn as about $472M. Delivery horizon points the same way: Kongsberg’s end-of-2029 completion matches Lot Three’s 31 December 2029 date, while Lot Two completes 30 November 2028.
This is a reading of the public record rather than a confirmation from Kongsberg, and the company has not published a contract-number reconciliation. The same method identifies the July release of an order worth about $100 million as P00003, whose completion date it matches.
One plant, one country, and a capacity ceiling
Every US JSM lot to date specifies work performed at Kongsberg, Norway, including Lot Three B, which runs to June 2030. The budget book names the same single manufacturer and location, and adds a number the contracts do not: a maximum production rate of 100 rounds a year against a minimum sustaining rate of 50, with a reorder lead time of 41 months.
Two lots in the published schedule share a delivery window. Lot 3 and Lot 4, 100 rounds each, are both shown delivering between February 2030 and January 2031. That is 200 rounds inside twelve months against a stated ceiling of 100. Either the windows overlap more loosely than the table implies, or the schedule assumes capacity the same document does not credit.
Kongsberg opened a new NSM and JSM plant at the Arsenalet industrial park in June 2024, built with Norwegian government and EU support. A US facility at Toano, Virginia was reported to have broken ground in January 2026, with production from late 2027, and Kongsberg Defence Australia is building a plant near RAAF Williamtown. None of that changes the near-term picture: on the contracts as written and the budget book as published, US JSM deliveries through 2032 are a single-site, single-country dependency.
The demand stack, and one distinction worth keeping
- Norway — first missiles delivered, marked at Ørland in April 2025.
- Japan, Australia — earlier customers. Australia signed a AU$142 million acquisition in September 2024 alongside a domestic-manufacture partnership.
- Germany — fifth customer, agreement signed with Norway in June 2025, contract estimated around NOK 6.5 billion, with a further NOK 3.5 billion agreement in May 2026.
- Canada — sixth customer, corresponding to the NOK 4.7 billion contract Kongsberg announced on 30 June 2026 for an initially undisclosed buyer.
- Belgium — a State Department authorization for AGM-184, reported at up to $236 million, quantity unspecified, cleared in May 2026.
The Belgium line is the one most often mis-shelved. A foreign military sales authorization is a ceiling and a permission, not an order and not backlog. It belongs in a pipeline column rather than a contracts column, and that distinction matters more as announcement volume rises.
How to read the next one
Duplicates and corrections are part of the record, and the 15 July list carries an unrelated correction of its own. Three checks separate a repeat from a new action before anything else needs verifying.
- Read the contract number first. FA8681-26-C-B002 appeared in December 2025 and again in June 2026. A repeated number with an identical figure is a duplicate until proven otherwise.
- Check whether the action is a contract or a modification. Lot Three arrived as P00001, not as a new award.
- Take the quantity from the budget book, not the announcement. The justification books publish lot sizes, unit costs and delivery windows that the contract notices omit, and the two records reconcile closely enough to check one against the other.
Sources
The contract record
- Department of War — 24 January 2025, Lot One definitization, PZ0002
- Department of War — 12 December 2025, original Lot Two award
- Department of War — 5 June 2026, duplicate entry
- Department of War — 9 June 2026, correction and Lot Three, P00001
- Department of War — 15 July 2026, Lot Three B, P00003
Kongsberg’s own disclosures
- Kongsberg, 8 June 2026 — further JSM deliveries to the US Air Force, about NOK 2.7bn, deliveries complete end-2029. Reproduced by ASDNews; the original sits in the company’s news archive
- Kongsberg, 30 June 2026 — NOK 4.7bn JSM order, sixth customer, later identified as Canada
- Kongsberg, 15 July 2026 — further JSM deliveries to the US Air Force, about $100 million, complete end-June 2030
Government and budget
- Norwegian Ministry of Defence — 25 June 2025, Germany–Norway JSM agreement
- Australian Department of Defence — 5 September 2024, JSM acquisition and manufacturing facilities
- Department of the Air Force — FY2027 Missile Procurement justification book (PDF), April 2026. Line item JSM000, P-1 line 14, volume 1 pages 63 to 72: resource summary, cost analysis and production schedule
- Air Force Financial Management — FY2025 Missile Procurement justification book (PDF), for the earlier buy profile
- Congressional Research Service — Defense Primer: US Precision-Guided Munitions (IF11353), AGM-184 designation and the NSM to JSM relationship
