The U.S. Marine Corps wants to be able to sink ships, and it wants that ability fast. The service is looking to field its own anti-ship missiles to defend Marines on shore from nearby enemy warships. The U.S. Marines are well known for invading islands and wresting them away from others during a conflict. They also have a lesser-known responsibility to defend them, and the Corps may be getting new ship-killing missiles to aid them in that task.

The test with the Oshkosh-built JLTV and Raytheon’s NSM was a demonstration of the Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) Ground-Based Anti-Ship Missile (GBASM) capability. NMESIS would provide the Marine Corps with a missile capable of sea-skimming, high-g maneuverability, and the ability to engage targets from the side, rather than top-down.

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NMESIS is envisioned to provide anti-ship fires from land as part of an integrated naval anti-surface warfare campaign. The Marine Corps’ GBASM solution consists of an unmanned JLTV-based mobile launch platform, called the Remotely Operated Ground Unit for Expeditionary Fires (ROGUE-Fires), and the Naval Strike Missile (NSM). The NSM is the same missile used by the navy for the over the horizon weapon system deployed on littoral combat ships.

The Naval Strike Missile (NSM) is an anti-ship and land-attack missile developed by the Norwegian company Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA). The English marketing name Naval Strike Missile was adopted later.The state-of-the-art design and use of composite materials is meant to give the missile sophisticated stealth capabilities. The missile will weigh slightly more than 400 kg (880 lb) and have a range of more than 185 km (100 nm).