The Air Force wants mini-missiles to defend tankers and cargo planes

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]The US Air Force wants to arm its cargo and tanker aircraft with new weapons that can bring down inbound missiles and drones. And they just put up a half a billion dollars to bring this concept to fruition. Now, this new program dubbed the large aircraft survivability systems or LAS effort aims to equip America's currently unarmed tankers, the KC135 and KC46, as well as vital logistics platforms like the C17 and C5 with a variety of external sensors that are integrated via onboard processors with both kinetic and non-kinetic aectors, which is contracting language. age for a sensor suite that can identify inbound threats and then relay their target tracks to either onboard electronic warfare systems or to actual interceptors of some sort that can be launched to bring those threats down.

[00:00:57]And the budgeting document does not mince words about the capabilities the Air Force is looking for, saying, and I quote, "Large aircraft must have the ability to detect, decide, and defeat the enemy threats organically from on board the aircraft." Now, to get things started, the Air Force is looking to invest about $50 million into developing that onboard sensor suite in 2027 alone, with another $18 million allocated to design potentials, with funding continuing to ramp up through 2031 for a total program cost of about $58 million over the span of 5 years. And while that might seem like a lot, that total is actually less than the cost of just one E7 wedge tail airborne early warning and control aircraft. So the potential return on investment here is pretty big. Now, this program appears to be in addition to the Northrup Grumman large aircraft infrared countermeasure system that's already making its way into the field and is oriented specifically at mitigating threats posed by the kinds of infraredg guided missiles that we saw employed by Iran throughout Operation Epic Fury.

[00:02:13]Now, that system includes a high-owered directed energy turret that dazzles or obstructs the infrared sensor on inbound heat-seeking weapons, causing them to lose their target track. Lass, on the other hand, seems aimed more toward higherend threats like long range radarg guided surfaceto-air missiles, air-to-air missiles, and various kinds of drones. Now, there are no details available as to what kinds of aectors LAS might employ to protect these aircraft, but there are a few known programs that might fit the bill.

[00:02:48]Non-kinetic aectors usually fall within the scope of electronic warfare capabilities and could include systems like the ALE55 fiber optic tow decoy which trails behind the aircraft to suppress, deflect, and seduce inbound weapons. Now, what that means is the toad decoy can jam radarg guided weapons or spoof them with false signals or it can finally present itself as a big juicy target for the weapon to go after instead of the aircraft. Now, there are even smaller systems like bright cloud which is a small radio frequency decoy that can be launched from existing flare and chaft dispensers as well. But the most interesting element of this last program is absolutely the idea of using kinetic aectors to intercept inbound missiles. Now that is no small undertaking, but it's theoretically entirely possible. Now one option depending on the nature of that inbound threat could be a platform like DARPA's X68A Longshot which has been described by its manufacturer General Atomics as an air launched fighter. Now, Longshot was designed to dramatically extend the reach of its onboard payload of two A120 AM RAM radar guided air-to-air missiles, but they could just as feasibly be launched to escort a tanker or a cargo plane or a bomber at the first signs of trouble. But I think it's more likely that we see some iteration of a weapon that's more like the miniature self-defense munition or MSDM that we know has been in the works at the Air Force Research Lab since 2015 or so.

[00:04:32]Now, these highly agile mini missiles are said to be around 3.3 ft long.

[00:04:38]That's about 1/3 the length of a Sidewinder with a solid rocket motor for propulsion and a lowcost infrared seeker for guidance. Now, when we last heard about these weapons in 2020, Rathon had been given a contract to continue R&D toward a flight test ready article. And as the war zone has also reported in the past, Northrup Grumman also filed a patent for a similar type of kinetic missile defense system all the way back in 2017. So, the precedent is certainly there.

[00:05:14]Hey, hey, hey.