Raytheon and Boeing officials expect the US Department of Defense to continue its stalled Joint Air-to-Ground Missile (JAGM) programme as a technology demonstration effort. The proposed US defence budg-et for fiscal year 2013 calls for only $10 million to be spent on the programme; insufficient to continue development of the new weapon. "There just wasn't enough money to proceed into a very demanding engineering and manufacturing development programme that was supposed to take off this year," says James Smith, Raytheon's business development director for advanced missiles. To keep the JAGM effort going, Smith says the DoD is expected to use research and development funding from 2011 and 2012 of about $300 million to pursue a technology demonstration, with contract awards set for August.
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