Lockheed had also competed for the ACM contract with a stealth cruise missile with a shape derived from its F-117 Nighthawk stealth combat jet. It has continued work on stealthy and other advanced missile systems, including the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) family and its Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) derivative, since then. As the Air Force has described it now, the service will leverage that experience to help in optimizing Raytheon's core design.

"I am confident in the program office’s ability to execute the next phase’s contract negotiations in a single-source environment and maintain schedule and affordability," Air Force Major General Shaun Morris, head of the AFNWC and the service's Program Executive Officer for Strategic Systems, said in a statement. "We are committed to acquiring an affordable LRSO weapon system and we have exceptional cost and design insight into both contractors' strategies, due to our progress with the acquisition reviews and the cost-capability trades."

Morris stressed that the decision to "off-ramp" Lockheed Martin as an LRSO prime contractor was an amicable decision with the company, unlike the spat between the Air Force and Boeing over the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) intercontinental ballistic missile program. Last year, Boeing announced it would not bid on the next GBSD contract, saying competitor Northrop Grumman had unfair advantages. Northrop Grumman now looks all but set to design and build the final GBSD design.

Regardless, the decision is a major victory for Raytheon over Lockheed Martin, the latter of which has been scooping up a large number of advanced missile contracts across the U.S. military in recent years, especially with regards to new hypersonic weapons, much of which remains highly classified. Lockheed Martin is also the prime contractor for JASSM and LRASM and the Air Force has separately hired the Maryland-headquartered defense giant to develop a new "extreme range" version of the aforementioned JASSM, known as the AGM-158D JASSM-XR. The company certainly has a lot on its plate already.