This article is published in Aviation Week & Space Technology and is free to read until Feb 21, 2025. If you want to read more articles from this publication, please click the link to subscribe.

USAF Boosts Maritime Strike With Targeting Systems And Weapons

Lockheed Martin AGM-158 Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile in flight

Lockheed Martin’s AGM-158 Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile has become the U.S. Air Force’s primary maritime strike weapon.

Credit: Lockheed Martin

The U.S. Air Force is increasingly putting enemy ships in its crosshairs, elevating a target set that it long treated as a secondary mission.

Although the service has had maritime targets in its mission set for years—Boeing B-52s, for instance, have been capable of mining harbors—prospects of conflict in the Indo-Pacific region and China’s massive naval expansion have added urgency to its efforts to counter those threats. Illustrating that mindset shift is an Air Force plan to better identify such threats and to integrate the stealthy AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) on the service’s Boeing F-15 and F-15EX fleet so those aircraft can attack enemy vessels at standoff distances.

  • F-15 to join B-1 with Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile compatibility
  • Air Force and Navy maximize cruise missile production

The LRASM is integrated on the Air Force’s Boeing B-1B Lancer and the Navy’s Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, and plans are in place for Lockheed Martin F-35s and Boeing P-8s to carry the weapon. It is the first increment of the Navy’s Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare plans. The follow-on Hypersonic Air-Launched Offensive Anti-Surface has so far been announced only for the Navy’s Super Hornet.

The F-15 integration is supposed to occur through a sole-source contract to Lockheed Martin, due in November, according to a Jan. 8 solicitation by the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, which manages the missile project.

In addition, the Air Force has been working to improve the Strike Eagle’s maritime role and enable it to drop guided bombs on ships. The service is testing the use of the 2,000-lb. GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munition “Quicksink” variant on the F-15E.

Operator feedback on the Quicksink might underpin the interest in adding the LRASM to the fighter. While tests have shown the weapon is effective at hitting ships, Strike Eagle pilots tell Aviation Week that the weapons’ lack of range puts them at risk of enemy air defenses.

Equipping the F-15 with an anti-ship missile is not entirely new, although the Air Force effort goes further. International F-15 operators have also integrated the AGM-84H/K Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response for the maritime strike role. The LRASM would give the service greater range.

The Air Force and Navy have sought to maximize production of the LRASM, along with Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) variants, through new multiyear procurement authorities. The Air Force’s fiscal 2025 budget request included funding for 550 of the missiles, for example.

Since LRASM and JASSM production is stretched thin, the Air Force is bringing on the Kongsberg Joint Strike Missile as a stopgap measure for its F-35As. The service’s fiscal 2025 budget request called for $165 million to buy 50 of the missiles, up from 48 in fiscal 2024. Australia and Norway are among the other F-35 users to buy the weapon.

To be able to use the LRASM, the Air Force is looking for new ways to track targets at sea. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is embarking on an effort called the Maritime Automated Ingestion for Scene-Aware Identification and Localization (Mainsail) to increase maritime domain awareness and improve target tracking by integrating new technologies, including machine-learning automatic target-recognition models for electro-optical and synthetic aperture radar imagery.

The project, slated for industry days on Feb. 11-12, would identify and exploit non-image contextual information to determine past locations and predict future locations, according to the AFRL notice. The notice focuses on undisclosed “overhead assets,” indicating a mix among aircraft, such as the Boeing E-7A Wedgetail, and satellites tasked with moving-target indication.

The Air Force has already shifted high-profile exercises to increase the focus on hitting enemy ships. This change started in early 2023 with the premiere Red Flag exercise at Nellis AFB, Nevada, where the service collaborated with the FAA to bridge the Nevada Test and Training Range with other airspaces across the West Coast and into the Pacific. During the first such exercise, U.S. Navy surface combatants played the role of Chinese vessels so U.S. Air Force bombers could simulate maritime attacks. The exercise included simulated B-52 standoff strikes.

In 2024, the Air Force started a new exercise, also at Nellis, called Bamboo Eagle. The latest iteration, held in August, included more than 150 aircraft from dispersed locations using new command-and-control technologies to simulate a fight over the vast Pacific.

The service will continue this momentum in August with one of the largest exercises in its recent history, called Return of Forces to the Pacific. This exercise will be connected with other large events, collectively using approximately 300 aircraft across 25 locations, from Australia to Alaska, and will run for about two weeks.

Brian Everstine

Brian Everstine is the Pentagon Editor for Aviation Week, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining Aviation Week in August 2021, he covered the Pentagon for Air Force Magazine. Brian began covering defense aviation in 2011 as a reporter for Military Times.