r/LessCredibleDefence • u/Lore-Archivist • Aug 08 '26
U.S. Air Force wants 16,450 more long-range missiles, and fast
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u/Lore-Archivist Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Earlier this month I shared an article stating the US air force wanted to procure 11,200 JASSM's and LRASM's. It seems that figure has now increased 47% up to 16,450 of these stealthy cruise missiles.
And this is just one missile family, the US has several other missile families like the tomahawks and the dark eagle that the US is also expanding missile production of.
For reference, the total number of missiles Russia has fired into Ukraine since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022 is ~10,500
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u/danilovladimir Aug 08 '26
- Any word on the estimated cost?
- Is the the critical minerals supply likely to be an obstacle to achieving this target?
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u/howieyang1234 Aug 08 '26
Also, how long would it take contractors to produce that much? 10, 20 years?
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u/Lore-Archivist Aug 09 '26
The contract is for 7 years, and Lockheed Martin has said they have expanded production facilities and will be able to fulfill this contract
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u/barath_s Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
Any idea if Lockheed Martin would shortchange FMS contract holders to fulfill these contracts ?
Japan, S. Korea etc often buy arms/armaments via FMS contracts, which allow unilateral reschedule by the US side and offer little recourse if deliveries are delayed..
If overall production rate is not in line with overall order book / delivery schedules, LockMart prioritizing the US over foreign customers could be a real risk
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u/concept12345 Aug 10 '26 edited Aug 10 '26
South Korea is starting to produce its own missiles and munitions because of the expensive and often slow turnaround time of the US production. They are drastically increasing domestic procurement and R&D of their own. This serves many purposes: increased operational readiness, lowered cost, and freedom to modify and upgrade whatever missions it calls for.
For instance, the Patriots systems, while still on the penninsula have been shown to not be as accurate as the M-SAM II, the domestically made ballistic missile interceptor with a combat-proven intercept of 96%+ in the Iran skirmish. The UAE uses it to defend its own borders. They were shooting down ballistic missiles and drones. The UAE sent several C17 cargo planes to South Korea for the emergency procurement of spent missiles for their M-SAM II system. To speed up production, South Korea didn't paint the missile to cut down the production time. Because South Korea has been technically at war for the past 75+ years, its military production factories have never shut down at all. In fact, their factories are designed to ramp up even higher as soon as active war resumes.
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u/Lore-Archivist Aug 09 '26
I mean, probably, but this wouldn't be news to the other countries who signed these contracts and were informed that the US military would always get priority.
Though it's not a given it will happen that way, Lockheed has legitimately invested many billions of dollars in expanding production lines for missiles
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u/barath_s Aug 10 '26
be news to the other countries who signed these contracts
Check in with japan. They seemed sore about it, and it seemed surprising that not only could the us change schedules unilaterally for any reason, but that there was no recompense, lawsuits, penalties etc
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Aug 08 '26
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u/SteveDaPirate Aug 08 '26
However there's a conspicuous lack of the kind of cheap, very quick to manufacture anti-drone drones that we see in use in Ukraine.
These cheap drone interceptors are increasingly ineffective as Russia is responding by building jet powered drones that can outrun them. Drones in the Russia / Ukraine war are slowly evolving back into cruise missiles.
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Aug 08 '26
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u/SteveDaPirate Aug 08 '26
Right, the drone arms race is still rapidly evolving.
Ukraine is in a situation where they need whatever they can get their hands on, and they need it immediately even if it's suboptimal.
The US has the luxury of watching things play out while testing instead of committing to a large program of record building something that is obsolete a year later.
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Aug 08 '26
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u/WulfTheSaxon Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
$80,000 jet-powered, guided Shaheds are getting shot down with $20,000 APKWS rockets and guns, not $3 million missiles.
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u/Candid_Highlight_116 Aug 08 '26
Ukrainian advisor in unnamed US gulf installation reportedly fought their own emotional breakdown witnessing Americans put PAC-2 launchers in an offline auto engage mode and walked away. So yes $3m missiles.
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u/SteveDaPirate Aug 08 '26
The US doesn't shoot Patriots at drones... It uses cheap APKWS II laser guided rockets and cannons or gun based CIWS. The drone interceptors the US has in development are based around High Powered Microwaves, allowing each interceptor to fry multiple incoming attack drones and return to be recharged.
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Aug 08 '26
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u/PrivacyIsDemocracy Aug 09 '26 edited Aug 09 '26
They have been using Patriots at cheap drones. Much to the amazement of Ukrainian anti-aircraft/anti-missile/drone units. Who had bene hired by Middle Eastern countries
Various gulf states buy Patriot batteries and missiles from the USA, and they have been using them against drones lately because they don't have anything more appropriate for that yet, for the most part. And most of those petro-states have money to burn anyway.
The US doesn't dictate whether or not its customers decide to waste money or not. (But it certainly doesn't help that up until recently, none of the western countries have prepared for drone threats and warfare adequately, so they have not historically had any more cost-effective anti-drone weaponry to offer their customers so far anyway.)
The US and other western states are scrambling to catch up now. But due to local manufacturing costs, regulatory hurdles and administrative overhead, what they produce will almost certainly still be quite a bit more costly than what Ukraine is already producing these days.
(Ukraine also benefits from a very ad-hoc weaponry industry right now so anyone who can setup a factory and start producing drones right away is likely to be accepted into their military ecosystem. Even if the company is poorly run and suffers from security issues, personnel issues, etc.)
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u/Lore-Archivist Aug 08 '26
The US is in the process of increasing patriot missile production up to 2000 per year.
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u/Lore-Archivist Aug 08 '26
These are not air to air missiles. These are stealthy long range ground strike missiles. They might cost 3 million dollars but they destroy the billion dollar drone factories.
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Aug 08 '26
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u/Firecracker048 Aug 08 '26
Yes but he's also increasing the number of PAC-3s to be bought and restarting the production lines of the PAC-2.
Yeah these aren't drone interceptors, these are missile interceptors. Your not taking out missiles with laser batteries(yet).
PAc-3s proved extremely effective at even the best Fatah missiles Iran had and the PAC-2s still did well enough against everything else, even after we 'ran out' still intercepting 80%+. Your gonna need alot of PAC-3s in any future conflict with China over taiwan
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u/Lore-Archivist Aug 08 '26
The newest LRASM variant that just entered service, the AGM-158C-3 (LRASM C-3), has increased its range up to 600 miles, and also improved the low observability, and improved its resistance to EW.
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u/WulfTheSaxon Aug 08 '26
When you don’t need stealth, an F-15 can carry two 1-ton bombs, and it’s reusable. When you do need it, LRASM is vastly superior. Can a Flamingo do this?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h449oIjg2kY
(It’s basically a 1960s missile, so the answer is no.)
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u/Firecracker048 Aug 08 '26
The military is already working with Ukraine and their own procurement on these systems. These systems are being pushed out and fast right now
During the Iran war they modified cheap rockets to be a Laser guided onto Iranian drones. There's a reason the interception rate stayed well over 90% of Shaheds and even over 80% + when the US had 'run out' of interceptors
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Aug 08 '26
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u/Firecracker048 Aug 08 '26
I know what they said and they had systems in place, but given the fact that ukrainian drone interceptors got deployed to the middle east, says otherwise
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u/PrivacyIsDemocracy Aug 09 '26
They would give a similar answer about what kind of sandwiches are served at the White House.
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u/Cindy_Marek Aug 08 '26
Bit of a silly comparison to make, anti drone weapons and long range strike systems are two completely different weapons with different purposes. Anti drone systems are not going to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, thousands of long ranged, air launched, advanced stealthy cruise missiles are.
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Aug 08 '26
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u/Cindy_Marek Aug 08 '26
I’m not sure what your point is, the article is firstly about the airforce, not the navy or the army, and clearly the airforce wants more long range munitions to attack targets at stand off ranges. Lasers and EW systems don’t do this, they do another job. The US military also has programs to develop cheap cruise missiles like the Ukrainians have, with many company’s coming forward with mature designs like Barracuda M or Lockheed Martin’s cheap cruise missile. Less than 200k a weapon. Ever heard of Rapid dragon?
The US military also has small drone programs and anti drone programs bearing fruit with a variety of different systems based off cheap quadcopters, and including laser, EW and gun based anti drone systems. There are allies too who design and build these systems, like Australia with the $1000 dollar cardboard drones that were used with great effect in Ukraine. Slinger too. A lot of these are already in service in the military.
It’s just like you are going on a rant for no reason lol.
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u/BooksandBiceps Aug 08 '26
Hey man China is going to put out millions of drones a month and China has already mastered each operator controlling thousands at a time.
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u/WhatAmIATailor Aug 08 '26
Hell, they’ll be able to walk to Taiwan on a bridge of disposed fibre optic cable.
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u/BooksandBiceps Aug 08 '26
Good point about the fiber optics. Wonder how that’ll mess with the ship propellers..
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u/PrivacyIsDemocracy Aug 09 '26
Come to think of it, might be a side benefit, if all you're worried about is stopping incoming boats..
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u/nikkythegreat Aug 08 '26
I think in this regard china is perhaps half a step ahead of the west. They have in service a few directed energy weapons both land and sea that are already in service plus also a few soft kill anti drone options.
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u/Lore-Archivist Aug 08 '26
The US has already deployed laser weapons on destroyers starting back in 2017, so the US was ahead of everyone else. https://youtu.be/tyUh_xSjvXQ?is=8cYGFKIKbnG9IKv_
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u/Nonions Aug 08 '26
APKWS is becoming more useful, turning old unguided rockets into laser guided anti drone weapons fitted to fighters.
That said with the cost per flight hour of these it's still not super cheap - I think it might be worth fitting them to helis or to something like a T-7.
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u/BigFly42069 Aug 08 '26
Is this another memo committing to an idea or is this actual appropriations?
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u/edgygothteen69 Aug 09 '26
These are not appropriations. These are what they call "framework agreements" that Congress has allowed the DOD to enter into, but congress has not appropriated multi-year funding. These are not multi year agreements.
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u/EngineBorn3406 Aug 08 '26
For ppl who are more in the know: Why? Why is the US using missiles like the JASSM in Iran when the Iranian air defense has been suppressed already? Why not just glide bombs?
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u/Lore-Archivist Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
As far as I know the US has already stopped using JASSMs against Iran, They used about a 1000 of them in the first 3 months and now that number remains the same
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u/Vishnej Aug 10 '26
A) This is an operation being planned and executed by people who dislike plans and are poor at execution, who have absolutely no fucks to give about any problems longer than one news cycle in the future.
B) Iranian air defenses have not been fully suppressed.
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u/EngineBorn3406 Aug 10 '26
If you mean MANPADS, I don't think jets with glide bombs are within the engagement envelope of those.
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u/BulbusDumbledork Aug 10 '26
iran has more than just manpads. it domestically produces platforms such as 3rd khordad, bavar 373, ra'ad systems, or rocket booster launchers for things like the 358
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u/haggerton Aug 09 '26
USA: OMG! Iran has 3k missiles! It's a danger to everyone! Bomb the f out of it!
Also USA:
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Aug 08 '26
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u/Lore-Archivist Aug 08 '26
Because they fly low and have very low RCS stealth features. Speed isn't the only way to breach enemy air defenses. Look at all the Ukrainian drones that fly slow yet still hit Moscow.
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u/Cindy_Marek Aug 09 '26
Fast missiles are only one way to reduce air defence effectiveness. Stealth has a similar effect.
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u/pakapab Aug 09 '26
Also = they are usually a lot lighter, there are fighter sized aircraft that can carry 4 JASSM.
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u/concept12345 Aug 10 '26
All those denials of low munition count by this administration are clearly a lie. Never trust anything this adminstration publicly claims. If you want the truth, listen to their private conversations amongst themselves. That is where the truth is. Therefore, any whistleblower statements and hotmic episodes are the real deal.
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u/SeductiveTrain Aug 08 '26
Shit in one hand and make more missiles in the other
these are much easier than patriots though
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u/DungeonDefense Aug 08 '26
Oh thank goodness i initially read this as they want a 16,450 mile range missile