PARIS AIR SHOW: Most coverage of the Small Diameter Bomb II has focused on when the F-35 will be able to use it — not ’till 2022 — instead of on the bomb program itself, which is moving ahead much more briskly.

Frank Kendall signed the crucial Milestone C Acquisition Decision Memorandum putting the program into low rate production in May. And then the Pentagon awarded Raytheon its first low rate contract on June 17 (Paris time) for 114 of the high precision flying bombs. The contract is tiny, just $31 million, but it is the beginning of what promises to be one of the biggest bomb programs in decades.

Why? Because the F-35 will carry the SDB II. The United States still plans to buy 2,442 planes. The nine partner countries — Australia (100), Canada, Denmark, Italy (90), the Netherlands (37), Norway (52), Turkey (100) and the United Kingdom (138) — along with Israel, Japan (42) and South Korea (40) and the US are likely to  buy something like 3,100 planes. That is a lot of prospective customers, said Jerry Tobey, the man who oversees Raytheon’s work on SDB II, during an interview at the company’s chalet.

“With all the JSF customers around the globe, there is going to be strong demand for the product,” Tobey said with some understatement. And the company believes it will be ready to export the SBD 2 to customers who already own F-16s, F-18s and F-15s by 2018, he added. The Navy and Air Force have begun SDB II integration for the F-35, F/A-18E/F, and F-16 aircraft.

Two things mark the SDB II as a particularly lethal weapon. It can fly 40 miles to its target. And it possesses a tri-mode seeker that is effective on both stationary and moving targets, on humans, vehicles (including armored ones), and buildings. The seeker can go after such a wide variety of prey because its multiple sensors share and fuse data as they approach the target . My understanding is it’s an uncooled tri-mode seeker with semiactive laser (SAL), uncooled imaging infrared, and millimeter wave guidance. (It can also use the Global Positioning System, though the military wants to move away from over-reliance on a GPS signal that can be jammed).

How big might this program get? Just for the United States it could hit $5 billion. Add in all those allies and partners and you are looking at one huge market over time.

Here are the details on what the low rate contract buys in addition to the bombs themselves: 156 SDB II single weapon containers, eight SDB II weapon load crew trainers and conventional munitions maintenance trainers, four SDB II Lot 1 practical explosive ordnance disposal system trainers, and data.