The Pentagon plans to delay a decision on whether to terminate the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) to the spring of 2008, bringing the total time needed to address a key technical problem in the stealthy cruise missile to one year.

Though a senior Air Force official says the missile is "eye watering" when it works, reliability is still a top concern for continuing the program.

The $5.8 billion Lockheed Martin missile program came under scrutiny in April when the Pentagon reported a major cost overrun to Congress. By law, the Pentagon must fully review the program and its stability before recertifying it and moving forward.

Typically, that feedback is provided within one month of notification to Congress. Requiring one year to certify a program is highly unusual, and it points to the Air Force's focus on fixing JASSM rather than exploring an alterative, like the German/Swedish Taurus KEDP-350 or MBDA Storm Shadow.

The service is particularly concerned about a Global Positioning System dropout problem - brought on by the Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module (SAASM) on the missile - that directed three of four missiles in recent tests nearly 200 feet from their targets (DAILY, May 10). The senior Air Force official says the service plans to fix the SAASM issue and run it through a series of ground and flight-tests before reassessing the missile's reliability. Further reliability enhancements have not been ruled out either.

After the disappointing flight-tests this spring, the missile demonstrated a 42 percent failure rate. Six hundred JASSMs have been delivered to operational units and it is unclear whether the Air Force will retrofit them. The Air Force buy is set at 4,000 missiles, including a mix of baseline and extended-range variants.