The US wants to significantly increase missile production in preparation for a possible conflict in the Taiwan Strait against China, a development of weapons that could quickly stall according to institutional challenges, labor difficulties, and a possible shortage of essential materials.
The US Air Force ( USAF ) is working on its Enterprise Test Vehicle ( ETV ) project this month, which aims to create low-cost, high-production cruise missiles for potential high-end conflicts, including those involving China in the Pacific.
The War Zone mentions that four businesses, including Zone 5 Technologies, Integrated Solutions for Systems, Leidos company Dynetics, and Anduril Industries, have been chosen to design, create, and aircraft test new missile ideas in the next seven times.
The report says that the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit ( DIU), in cooperation with the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Armament Directorate ( AFLCMC/EB), announced the collaboration, which also involves US Special Operations Command ( SOCOM), Naval Air Systems Command ( NAVAIR ), and US Indo- Pacific Command ( USINDOPACOM).
The ETV task is aimed at creating professional and dual-use technology solutions that demonstrate scalability for subsystem upgrades and function as a basis for low-cost, high-rate production, according to The War Zone.
The missiles are anticipated to be able to be deployed in large numbers using a variety of launch techniques, which poses a geopolitical risk to adversaries.
The project intends to create financial ammunition stockpiles for extended conflicts using commercial off-the-shelf components and modern manufacturing techniques. If successful, the initiative was substantially increase the USAF’s corporate skills while reducing costs.
According to the War Zone report, the designs aim for a range of about 500 nautical miles, great supersonic speed, and a cost goal of US$ 150, 000 per unit in bulk orders, which is considerably lower than the existing AGM- 158B Joint Air- to Surface Standoff Missile- Extended Range ( JASSM- ER ), which costs between$ 1.2-$ 1.5 million per unit.
The ETV project comes after a significant US spending spree to increase missile stocks. Task and Purpose reported in March 2023 that the Pentagon had allocated$ 30.6 billion of its$ 842 billion budget for 2024 to expand its tactical missile and munitions arsenal.
Task and Purpose points out that while the US Navy and Air Force intend to purchase more Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles ( LRASMs), missile stocks may not be sufficient for a potential conflict over the Taiwan Strait in 2027, necessitating easy-to-make, low-cost alternatives.
The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated the prodigious need for precision-guided weapons in massive, industrialized wars, making low-cost solutions all the more necessary.
Christopher Miller points out in the Financial Times that Russia’s retrofitting of cheap pop-up wings and satellite guidance with Soviet-era gravity bombs has proved deadly against Ukraine’s forces.
Such vintage weapons include the 1, 500- kilogram FAB- 1500 from World War II, the 500- kilogram FAB- 500, first produced in the 1950s, and the much larger FAB- 3000, a 3, 000- kilogram bomb from the same period.
Miller claims that these guidance kits allow the bombs to be launched from outside the Ukrainian airspace and that they are much less expensive for Russia to use because one bomb can destroy several buildings at once.
Russia’s extensive Soviet-era stockpiles of gravity bombs have allowed it to carry out frequent airstrikes against Ukrainian forces. Miller says that in the third week of March, Russia launched over 700 guided bombs. At the time of his writing, Russia has launched 3, 500 guided bombs this year, a 16- fold increase over 2023.
According to Miller, mass guided bombings were key to Russia’s bloody capturing of Avdiivka in mid-February, and that mass cruise and ballistic missile strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure plunged Kharkov into darkness and threatened the destruction of Kaniv and Zaporizhzhia’s hydroelectric facilities.
In the first days of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the US may run out of high-tech munitions in the wake of Russia’s prodigious expenditure of precision-guided munitions made of refurbished vintage bombs.
Seth Jones notes in a January 2023 CSIS article that CSIS war games conducted in January 2023 demonstrated that the US might run out of precision-guided munitions in a Taiwan Strait conflict in less than a week.
In two dozen versions of a CSIS war game playing a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, Jones mentions that the US spent 5, 000 long-range missiles in three weeks of conflict, wasting its entire stock of LRASMs in just the first week.
Jones points out that China has been acquiring high-end weapons and equipment five to six times more quickly than the US, noting that the Ukraine war has highlighted significant deficiencies in America’s ability to produce sufficient arms.
He also makes mention of several obstacles to expanding the US defense industry base, including inconsistent and unpredictable orders from the US Department of Defense ( DOD ), limited supply chains for crucial components, China’s dominance of rare earth metal supplies and nitrocellulose for explosives, long lead replacement times for spent munitions, and bureaucratic delays in foreign military sales ( FMS ) programs.
Although the ETV project can reduce the US’s need for expensive weapons stock by enabling low-cost design and manufacturing, it is unclear whether US stocks are sufficient to increase missile production.
Joe Buccino writes in a Defense One article from February 2024 that the US must focus on crucial munitions and rehabilitate its obscure National Defense Stockpile.
Buccino notes that the National Defense Stockpile, which operates across the US, holds an emergency supply of critical metals such as aluminum, titanium, magnesium, and electric steel, saying that rehabilitation efforts should focus on these.
Buccino does point out that while the US government recognizes 50 materials as critical, the National Defense Stockpile is only kept at six full or nearly full depots, which is a paltry compared to the US’s 102 depots and 92 critical materials at the height of Cold War times.
Buccino claims that a critical munitions reserve within the National Defense Stockpile would restore munitions stocks for air and missile defense, interdiction operations, interdiction operations, and the destruction of hardened or buried structures. Such munitions, Buccino says, include the LRASM, JASSM- ER, Precision Strike Missiles ( PSMs) and 155- millimeter artillery rounds.
Buccino suggests that the US PROCURE Act, which creates a$ 500 million annual revolving fund within the Treasury Department to allow the Pentagon to purchase essential munitions, could help restock the National Defense Stockpile.
That, he says, would allow the DOD to swiftly replenish high- demand munitions supplied to US allies and partners in future conflicts, using profits from FMS programs.