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Personnel load a Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile onto a B-1B bomber.
The Pentagon needs to respond more aggressively to China’s advancement in weapons development, looking for longer range and increased quantities of key munitions, the U.S. Air Force’s boss argues.
China has notably advanced in a “wide array of munitions of various types, which are all designed one way or another to be superior to the things that we’re fielding,” service Secretary Frank Kendall said in a Dec. 19 Mitchell Institute event.
Kendall, who took over as the service’s top civilian in 2021 and will leave office in the next few weeks with the changeover of the presidential administration, said he reviewed the Air Force’s stocks of munitions early in office.
Advanced Air Force munitions in development are getting more expensive, as they are also getting smarter, he said.
“There’s a lot of innovation to be had there, but there are still some fundamentals where you want to have an advantage,” Kendall says. “Say, range, for air-to-air weapons, you also want to have an effective standoff at the targets that you’re worried about.”
While the Air Force is developing munitions such as the AIM-260 Joint Tactical Missile and the new Stand-in Attack Weapon, it is also pressing to increase production of other systems such as the AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile and AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile.
China, meanwhile has advanced quickly on its own new systems. For example, the Pentagon’s annual China Military Power Report released last month says the nation reached initial operational capability with its PL-17 air-to-air missile in 2023, capable of hitting targets up to 400 km (248.5 mi.) away.
It currently takes the Pentagon about 18 months to build missiles, a process that needs to speed up.
“If we do invest in the industrial base, and there’s been a lot of talk about this recently, the two things that I would put at the top of my list are munitions and high-demand spare parts, so that you keep as many [aircraft] in the fight as possible effectively over time,” he says.
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