With a clutch of new long-range air-to-air missiles (LRAAMs) with ranges of 300 km or more, US forces could dramatically shift the aerial balance of power over the Western Pacific.
Travelling at least twice as far as existing US missiles, the US Navy’s new AIM-174 and AIM-424 and the joint US Air Force and Navy AIM-260 promise to extend the outermost ring of aerial defences surrounding American and allied warships, air bases, headquarters and front-line ground forces.
Adding range to a missile is easier said than done, as it usually means installing a bigger and pricier rocket motor. A bigger motor may then require a bigger and pricier missile body.
The investment should pay off. Firing better missiles farther, USN and USAF fighters could shoot down many Chinese air force and navy fighters and bombers before those targets could launch their own missiles.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of this development. As recently as a couple of years ago, the Chinese military was winning the race for farther-flying jets and munitions. With three new LRAAMs, the Americans are poised to sprint ahead. And they could take any willing allies with them.
At the height of the Cold War, starting in the late 1950s, the Soviet Navy began deploying hundreds of heavy bombers armed with anti-ship cruise missiles ranging hundreds of kilometres. The bombers represented an existential threat to USN aircraft carriers.
That changed in 1974 with the first front-line cruise of the US Navy’s Grumman F-14 Tomcat. The F-14 ranged farther than the fighters it replaced, and its AIM-54 Phoenix missiles ranged farther than the missiles they replaced.
Targeting was and still is a challenge. The F-14 and AIM-54 worked because the fighter packed a powerful radar system, the AWG-9, and also had help from Grumman E-2 Hawkeye radar early warning planes. Today, LRAAMs work because fighters can tap wide-ranging sensor networks, including satellites.
Carrier battle groups embarking F-14s could engage Soviet bombers 1,000 km away without calling in vulnerable aerial tankers. That was slightly farther than the Soviet Union’s mainstay Kh-22 anti-ship missile could travel, meaning the F-14s could take out the bombers before the bombers could attack the carriers.
But the F-14 retired from USN service in 2006 and took the AIM-54 with it. USN air defences contracted, a lot. The Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets that took over fleet defence ranged just 560 km or so. Likewise, their AIM-120 Amraam missiles lacked the AIM-54’s reach.
Russian warplanes and missiles were still a threat, but Chinese planes and their own missiles were becoming an even greater threat. Chinese air-to-air and anti-ship missiles have improved at a startling pace. Every couple of years, a new missile type has appeared, each faster or longer-ranged (or both) than the one before.
By the 2020s Chinese bombers could shoot at American carriers from 600 km away, if not farther. Complicating the US air-defence problem, Chinese fighters could fling PL-16 air-to-air missiles at American planes from 300 km away, twice as far as the Americans could shoot back.
The margin of error for the carrier’s fighter wing had slipped to zero. The US Air Force was already working with the US Navy on a new long-range air-to-air missile, the AIM-260, but the new missile’s date for becoming operational kept slipping. The AIM-260 is due to enter service any day now, but by 2024 the US Navy was no longer willing to wait.
In a crash program, USN developers secretly modified a ship-launched surface-to-air missile, the Raytheon SM-6, for aerial launch. The fleet conspicuously debuted the AIM-174 at a naval war game in the summer of 2024.
The resulting AIM-174 flies at least 240 km, effectively doubling the F/A-18’s engagement range and potentially pushing Chinese bombers back far enough that, in a clash on the open ocean, the bombers couldn’t always shoot first at American warships.
But the Americans weren’t content with the makeshift AIM-174, especially given the surface fleet’s high demand for the SM-6 that it was based on. In the second missile surprise in two years, fleet officials revealed another new LRAAM, the AIM-424, in August.
It, like the AIM-260, reportedly ranges nearly 300 miles (480 km), likely matching or exceeding the range of the best Chinese air-to-air missiles and most Chinese anti-ship missiles. Already in flight testing, the AIM-424 should reach the front-line fleet in the next couple of years.
The clutch of new missiles has extended American air defences hundreds of kilometres in the span of just a couple of years. Another extension is coming in the 2030s, when new long-range fighters Boeing is developing for the USAF and USN enter service. Armed with AIM-260s and AIM-424s, the new fighters could engage Chinese and Russian jets more than 1,600 km from their bases or carriers, and even farther if the new fighters can access aerial tankers.
For the first time since the F-14 bowed out of US service, the Americans are beginning to dictate the terms of the most intensive aerial combat. The new missiles that are driving this sea change in US air defence aren’t cheap. An AIM-174 costs at least $4 million. An AIM-260 and AIM-424 may cost even more.
The hefty price tag might explain why US allies aren’t yet lining up to acquire the new LRAAMs. Australia has said it will spend an initial $740 million buying AIM-260s. But Japan has chosen to develop its own LRAAM. Most ambitiously, the Japanese are reportedly working on an air-to-air variant of the ASM-3 cruise missile. If it works, the result could range more than 500 km.
In case it doesn’t work, Tokyo should have a back-up plan for arming its fighters with at least one of the American LRAAMs. Working together, US and allied forces could reverse years of Chinese gains in the airspace over the Western Pacific. In a war, they could shoot at Chinese planes before Chinese planes could shoot back.
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