This fall, the US Navy will test a new weapon system—at least, one that’s new to the US—aboard the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) USS Coronado somewhere off the California coast. In search of some way to beef up the firepower of the oft-maligned LCS class, the Navy will test-launch a missile that can fly up to 100 miles and strike targets at sea or on land. And that missile comes not from one of the big names in the US defense industry but from Norway.

The LCS was supposed to be a modular, flexible ship that could get in close to shore and support troops with missile fire. But when the US Army cancelled the Non-Line of Site (NLOS) missile program, it took the teeth out of that idea—the modular missile system was also supposed to be the LCS’s go-to weapon for longer-range land and sea attack.

Since then, the only missile that has even been fired from an LCS-class ship is the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile, an anti-air point defense missile system tested aboard the USS Freedom in 2009 and 2010. And concerns about the ship’s underpowered armament and inherent lack of flexibility without a missile capability made it an expensive sitting duck in “contested” waters—in other words, against any adversary that could put even a patrol boat armed with anti-ship missiles to sea. As a result, the Navy cut the number of LCS ships to be built in half and froze the purchase of ships not already under construction while it looks at alternatives.

The Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile—that missile from Norway—might be part of the answer to the LCS’s woes. The turbojet-powered cruise missile is already in service aboard Royal Norwegian Navy patrol boats and in a truck-mounted version with the Polish Navy’s coastal defense forces and has been chosen as the basis for the air-launched Joint Strike Missile—a standoff attack missile for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

While the current NSM is a sea-skimming anti-ship weapon, the Joint Strike Missile will also be able to attack land targets and fly over 150 nautical miles, delivering a 265-pound warhead. On July 14, Kongsberg signed a partnership deal with Raytheon, under which Raytheon will produce the JSM for the US military market as primarily an air-launched weapon, as a potential replacement for the venerable Harpoon missile system. But in an interview with Defense News at the Farnborough International Air Show, Taylor Lawrence, the president of Raytheon Missile Systems, said, “We will grow into the surface-launched area as well.”

The NSM test-launch from the Coronado would be the first step toward that growth. But it’s a long way from becoming an actual LCS weapons system, and there are some problems that have to be addressed if it is adopted. The NSM is a much bigger missile system than the ones originally intended for the LCS—it weighs 500 pounds and is usually carried aboard patrol craft in large box launchers, so there’s the problem of figuring out where on deck the missiles would be stowed. And the LCS has no onboard sensor systems that can target anything over the horizon.

In the interim, the Navy is looking at other solutions. Development work has begun on adapting the AGM-114 Hellfire missile system—the missile that has become synonymous with Predator drone strikes—for ship-launched use. But the Hellfire, which weighs 108 pounds and carries a 20-pound warhead, has a range of only five miles, so it's useful only as a defense against patrol craft and other small, close targets that can be "illuminated" with a targeting laser (though the "Longbow" variant used aboard Apache helicopters uses an onboard active radar guidance system).