Drones, the Air Littoral, and the Looming Irrelevance of the USAF

[Kirkhill]

And jobs for AC-130s - a bit more reach.

AC-130 Gunship-Launched Black Arrow Small Cruise Missile Has A 400-Mile Range

Leidos is looking at also making the Black Arrow available for ground and sea-based launch platforms, from HIMARS to warships. The manufacturer has disclosed that the Black Arrow, also known as the Small Cruise Missile, has a range of at least 400 nautical miles.

www.twz.com

Harpoon Anti-Ship Missile-Armed AC-130J Gunships Could Be On The Horizon

Harpoons would give AC-130Js a dedicated tool for engaging enemy ships and fit well with plans to boost their capabilities with new radars.

www.twz.com

As well as

Rapid Dragon (missile system) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Kirkhill]

Memo to self:

Bring truckloads of batteries in January.

Chilling effects: What one Army unit learned about cold-weather drone warfare

Frozen propellers and short-lived batteries are just some of the challenges these grunts faced during training in Europe.

www.defenseone.com

The Army also ordered electric-powered versions of the ISV but is pivoting to focus on hybrids only as part of a larger shift away from clean energy initiatives

 

[Kirkhill]

And the C-UAS fight

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2025/05/military-wants-stealthier-smarter-tech-take-down-drones/405058/?oref=d1-skybox-hp

The Pentagon’s Replicator project is asking industry for ways to detect and down enemy drones that can be used without harming surrounding areas—like American territory.

Lawmakers and military officials are increasingly concerned about the rise of illicit drone sightings around military bases, as well as the vulnerability of critical security infrastructure. In 2024, the Defense Department requested $10 billion for counter-drone tech, according to a September report from AUVSI.

But the threat from drones is rising faster than the Pentagon can deploy defenses, Rear Adm. Paul Spedero, vice director for operations for the Joint Staff, told the House oversight subcommittee on military and foreign affairs last week.

"The homeland is no longer a sanctuary. And should our adversary choose to employ drones for surveillance or even attack, we would not be prepared to adequately defend our homeland and only marginally capable to defend our military installations.”

The paper noted the limitations of traditional methods of drone detection such as radar, radio frequency analysis, acoustic sensors, and visual cameras. Radar systems often struggle to identify small, low-flying drones. Radio-frequency analysis doesn’t work on autonomous drones that operate without active communication links. Acoustic sensors detect drones’ sounds but have trouble in noisy settings. Visual cameras’ effectiveness is limited by lighting conditions, weather, and obstructions, and they may struggle to distinguish drones from other small airborne objects.

The paper argues for a hybrid approach fusing these and other data. But that presents an enormous data challenge in synthesizing and analyzing large volumes of dissimilar data. That’s a challenge that the commercial tech sector has been focused on for years, less so the U.S. military.

“The AI-enabled decision support is really a critical area because the volume of data and the speeds that we're talking about…is truly astronomical,” Beck said.

 

[Kirkhill]

Article concerning "sticker shock" on the USAF CCA programme.

CCA sticker shock: Coming soon to a congressional hearing near you? - Breaking Defense

Travis Sharp from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments argues that the Air Force is giving an incomplete picture of the total cost of the CCA program — and that might be a problem down the road.

breakingdefense.com

The results reaffirm that procurement unit cost offers an astonishingly incomplete picture of the total resources required to field a weapon. Even the least expensive CCA included in the analysis ($9 million per aircraft) would have total lifecycle costs through 2045 in the $35 billion to $55 billion range. The most expensive CCA ($37 million per aircraft) would have total costs in the $80 billion to $125 billion range.

I think this comes back to a very simple question:

Is the CCA an aircraft or a munition?

If it is an aircraft designed for multi-mission use then you get one answer.
If it is a munition designed for single-mission use then you get another answer. Even if the munition is recoverable and designed to reuse and recycle.

If the latter case then the life cycle costs are best appreciated, I would think, by comparing the craft to either/or the Tomahawk or reusable target drones.

The USAF seems to be having a discussion between those looking at 3 MUSD solutions and those looking at 30 MUSD solutions.

 

[Kirkhill]

We will build up to 7,000 new long-range
weapons in the UK to provide greater
European deterrence and support
around 800 jobs.

UK SDR 2025

....

US Navy to field anti-ship version of its Tomahawk - Taipei Times

Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan

www.taipeitimes.com

....

The Tomahawk missile weighs 1300 kg without a booster and delivers a 450 kg payload out beyond 1600 km when air launched.
The MQ-58 Valkyrie has an empty weight of 1134 kg and a maximum take-off weight of 2722 kg.
Subtract the 1300 kg Tomahawk weight from the 2722 kg MTOW and you are left with 1422 kg of MQ-58 plus fuel.
1422-1134 = 288 kg of fuel.

The hard points may need some fiddling.
I wonder how much range can be achieved by using the Valkyrie as a booster?
What happens if you add more RATO/JATO rockets?

It would double the cost of a one way attack mission. But that could be reduced if the Valkyrie were recoverable.

....

I have no idea what the effect on the ranges would be but I suspect that a modified Valkyrie type vehicle, which has a purported range of 5600 km, could be engineered to carry a Tomahawk to a launch point.

5600 km plus 1600 km = 7200 km

Tomahawk cost = 2-4 MUSD
Valkyrie cost = 2 MUSD (>100 per year) to 4 MUSD (50 per year)

Distance from Bagotville QC to Dover UK = 4982 km
Distance from Cold Lake AB to Tokyo = 7983 km (Comox to Hokkaido is 6639 km)

....

Caudle urged caution in launching into a “shipbuilding arms race,” saying the focus should be on US capabilities per vessel.

You don't defeat knights with knights. You defeat knights with arrows. Mass quantities of arrows produced on an industrial scale.

 

[Kirkhill]

More on the 30 MUSD aircraft vs 3 MUSD weapon discussion.

USAF may be tilting towards the weapon end of the debate.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/06/05/the_big_question_over_fighter-like_drones_1114618.html

A few lines in the Mitchell report pointed in that direction. ‘We steered clear of the term “attritable”,’ said study director and author Mark Gunzinger, because the willingness to lose aircraft depended so much on the scenario. It wasn’t just a matter of aircraft design.

The other pointer was that the Blue teams requested far more expendable systems than recoverable ones and highlighted their logistics advantages. ‘Designing CCA to be more like fighters increases their logistics footprints,’ the report states, whereas ‘designing CCA to be more like weapons significantly reduces their logistics footprints—it’s like a sliding scale.’

Runway-independent CCAs ‘helped operators to remain unpredictable’ and complicated Red’s airbase attacks. And, clearly, expendable systems can be much smaller than CCAs that must make a return trip, and, like munitions, they need no maintenance.

In short, expendable CCAs launched without runways are a different approach to the game of adding mass to the force, one that doesn’t involve buying a lot of logistical problems.

The conclusion is that powerful operational incentives are pushing towards one-way vehicles. Technology is helping them: small, cheap but effective payloads such as Brite Cloud, generic software-defined radio systems for communication, and unjammable optical navigation.