Latest news with #CMMT
Yahoo
a day ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Lockheed tests low-cost cruise missiles that turn cargo planes, choppers into bombers
Lockheed Martin has successfully tested two new versions of its Common Multi-Mission Truck (CMMT), a low-cost vehicle designed to carry a variety of payloads for military missions, the company announced this week. The two models, CMMT-D and CMMT-X, are designed to give the US military affordable options for long-range strikes and other missions. The CMMT-D is an unpowered glide vehicle, while the CMMT-X is a powered, experimental version. Both were tested in recent weeks using different launch methods. New low-cost cruise missile The CMMT-D, short for 'Demonstrator,' was dropped vertically from a pallet to simulate a cargo aircraft launch, similar to the Air Force's 'Rapid Dragon' system. It then deployed its wings and glided unpowered to the ground. The CMMT-X, with a motor labeled as 'experimental,' was launched from under a small Piper Navajo aircraft, separated cleanly, and flew under its power after ignition. Lockheed introduced the CMMT-D in March during the AFA Warfare Symposium. The company sees the platform as a cheaper alternative to its high-end Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), which is stealthy and expensive. The CMMT-D has a range of about 500 nautical miles and is expected to cost around $150,000, about a tenth of the cost of a JASSM. However, it's not built to be as stealthy. Both versions are intended to support growing military interest in large numbers of affordable weapons for high-volume combat scenarios. Lockheed is developing vehicle launch options on pylons, pallets, and vertical platforms. They are also designed to be produced quickly and at scale, using digital design and manufacturing tools. First test The CMMT-D was the first compact cruise missile to be deployed from a Rapid Dragon pallet cell, the same type used by the Air Force to drop cruise missiles from the back of cargo planes like the C-17 and C-130. In a May test over Oregon, the pallet was lifted by helicopter to 14,500 feet to simulate a drop from an aircraft. The missile glided to the ground after being released. Lockheed said the CMMT-D test marked 'the first deployment of a compact air vehicle in a tactically representative airborne environment.' The company also said it achieved this milestone just 10 months after beginning the project. In June, the CMMT-X completed its first powered flight after being launched under a civilian turboprop. It deployed its wings mid-air and its engine engaged, marking the next phase of Lockheed's vision for affordable expendable systems. The CMMT-X is a successor to the company's 2020 'SPEED RACER' prototype and has a range of about 350 nautical miles. Lockheed highlighted that digital design tools helped cut the time from concept to flight by half. Those same tools may allow rapid scaling into full production if the military gives the green light. While the Air Force has not finalized the next phase of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, Lockheed said the CMMT's proven design and modular architecture could be adapted quickly for future low-cost CCA missions.
AllAfrica
2 days ago
- Business
- AllAfrica
US banking on cheap missiles to narrow China war gap
The US is betting on a new wave of cheap cruise missiles to win a high-tech war of attrition against China. This month, US defense contractor L3Harris Technologies revealed the 'Red Wolf' and 'Green Wolf' missiles, offering affordable, long-range strike capabilities for the US military amid rising tensions with China in the Pacific, Reuters reported. The systems support the US Department of Defense's (DoD) 'affordable mass' strategy, shaped by recent conflicts in Ukraine and Israel that underscored the need for large stockpiles of deployable munitions. Both multi-role missiles exceed a 200-nautical-mile range and can engage moving naval targets. Red Wolf focuses on precision strikes, whereas Green Wolf is designed for electronic warfare and intelligence collection. Production is underway in Ashburn, Virginia, with initial low-rate manufacturing progressing toward full-scale output. L3Harris anticipates pricing around US$300,000 per unit and aims to produce roughly 1,000 annually. Having completed over 40 successful test flights, the systems mark a strategic pivot as Lockheed Martin and RTX currently dominate the long-range missile market. The Red and Green Wolf systems join a growing list of weapons marketed under the affordable mass concept, including Anduril's Barracuda and Lockheed Martin's Common Multi-Mission Truck (CMMT), which embody competing visions of low-cost, mass-producible cruise missiles designed to saturate peer adversaries. Anduril's Barracuda—available in three scalable configurations—emphasizes rapid production using commercial components, modular payloads and autonomous teaming enabled by its Lattice software. Designed for flexibility across air, sea and land launches, it has entered a US Air Force/Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) prototype effort. In contrast, Lockheed's CMMT, or 'Comet,' is a modular, non-stealthy missile priced at $150,000 and optimized for global assembly and palletized mass launch from cargo aircraft. Barracuda emphasizes software-defined autonomy and flexible mission roles, while CMMT focuses on industrial-scale modularity and global assembly for cost-effective mass deployment. As the US military turns to low-cost cruise missiles like Barracuda, CMMT and the Red and Green Wolf to achieve affordable mass, a critical question looms: can these cheaper weapons deliver sufficient firepower, scale and survivability to offset industrial shortfalls and support sustained combat in a high-intensity war with China? According to the US DoD's 2024 China Military Power Report (CMPR), China possesses the world's largest navy by battle force, exceeding 370 ships and submarines, including over 140 major surface combatants. Mark Gunzinger argues in a November 2021 article for Air & Space Forces Magazine that the US suffers from a shortage of precision-guided munitions (PGMs), rooted in outdated assumptions favoring short wars, which he argues limits its ability to sustain combat against China. Seth Jones writes in a January 2023 report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that the US defense industrial base remains optimized for peacetime and lacks resilient supply chains. Jones warns that this situation leaves the US unprepared for a protracted conflict, such as a Taiwan contingency against China, where early depletion of high-end munitions could prove disastrous. He stresses that in a potential US-China war over Taiwan, the US could expend up to 5,000 high-end, multi-million-dollar long-range missiles—including the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), Harpoon anti-ship missile and Tomahawk cruise missile—within the first three weeks of conflict. While ramping up production of lower-end PGMs could, to some extent, alleviate shortages, Evan Montgomery and others argue in a June 2024 article for War on the Rocks that cheap, mass-produced PGMs often lack the performance—stealth, speed, range and penetrating power—needed to generate lasting strategic effects. Drawing on recent case studies, they point out that Israel's neutralization of Iran's April 2024 drone swarm using $20,000-$50,000 Shahed loitering munitions contrasts sharply with Ukraine's selective use of advanced, multi-million-dollar munitions such as Storm Shadow and the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS). They note the latter precision strikes forced costly Russian Black Sea Fleet redeployments and disrupted operations. Montgomery and others conclude that low-cost swarms may struggle to inflict meaningful attrition, particularly if autonomy and swarming technologies remain immature or economically unscalable. Given the capability gap between high-end PGMs like the $3.2 million per unit LRASM and more affordable systems such as the Red Wolf, Stacey Pettyjohn and others argue in a January 2025 article for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) that the US must urgently implement a high-low PGM mix to deter China. They argue that China's People's Liberation Army's (PLA) rapid expansion and increasingly coercive maneuvers have outpaced the US's Indo-Pacific posture, exposing a strategic mismatch in both capability and scale. They point out that while high-end weapons are critical for penetrating advanced defenses and executing high-value missions, they are constrained by cost, availability and replenishment lag. Conversely, they state low-cost autonomous systems can be produced more rapidly and in greater numbers to bolster mass and sustain combat effectiveness over time, though they lack the capability of high-end systems. However, Pettyjohn and others caution that the US DoD's risk-averse acquisition culture and absence of a clear operational concept integrating both tiers exacerbate these challenges. Explaining the roots of this problem, Shands Pickett and Zach Beecher write in a June 2025 article for War on the Rocks that a widening rift between traditional prime contractors and non-traditional tech entrants is fracturing the US defense-industrial base. Pickett and Beecher note that primes, known for delivering large-scale, complex systems, are criticized for being slow, risk-averse and too focused on legacy programs. In contrast, they state that non-traditionalists bring agility and innovation, rapidly developing capabilities using commercial best practices. Yet Pickett and Beecher note that these firms often struggle with integration into mission systems and scaling for full-rate production. They liken this incompatibility to clashing software languages, resulting in technical debt, mission gaps and an industrial ecosystem fragmented and ill-suited to modern threats. While low-cost missiles can help close the gap in munitions volume, their strategic value hinges on effective integration, operational clarity and industrial readiness. Without structural reforms to US acquisition practices and production infrastructure, affordable mass may fall short of delivering meaningful deterrence in a high-end conflict with China.
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Lockheed's Low-Cost Cruise Missile ‘Truck' Is Now In Testing
Lockheed Martin has revealed more about its Common Multi-Mission Truck (CMMT, pronounced 'comet'), a revised design based on its Speed Racer air vehicle concept, a missile-shaped uncrewed system you can read more about here. The CMMT is now said to be a family of systems, intended to yield low-cost subsonic air vehicles designed for a wide range of missions and for launch from both air and ground platforms. The ethos is very much in keeping with an ongoing U.S. Air Force push for cheaper, easier-to-produce munitions that has been accelerated by the realities of the current stockpile and its limited depth. Lockheed is currently pitching CMMT in two basic configurations. The first is a missile that will be deployed via U.S. Air Force fighters, bombers, and transports. Concept artwork this week by Lockheed Martin shows CMMTs being launched from a C-130 series airlifter (as seen at the top of this story) and from an F-16 fighter. The second configuration is for a smaller long-range launched effect that will be deployed from rotary-wing platforms — the related concept artwork shows an H-60 Black Hawk series helicopter. At the 2025 Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) Warfare Symposium today, Lockheed Martin also showed concept artwork of a ground-launched version of CMMT, with an example being fired from an M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) using one of its rocket pods. This version is apparently based on the second configuration of CMTT, but it's fitted with a supplementary booster for launching. As for the air-launched version of the larger CMMT, Mike Rothstein, vice president of Strategy and Requirements, Air Weapons and Sensors at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control said at the AFA Warfare Symposium today that a potential palletized scenario could involve as many as 25 CMMTs. This compares with the nine palletized JASSM missiles used in Rapid Dragon, a previous experimental effort that armed airlifters with cruise missiles but which is, broadly speaking, conceptually similar to CMMT. Rothstein confirmed that, over the last weekend, the company completed a CMMT drop test, making use of the latest iteration of Rapid Dragon to test the new store in what he described as 'more of a lab test,' involving a common pallet dropped under a parachute. This will be followed up by a planned free flight test of CMMT later this year, Rothstein said. Lockheed Martin has recently also released more details about the development path for CMMT — which it says is 'highly adaptable and affordable' and which 'can be produced and delivered as fast as it is expended.' The ability to produce munitions at scale is something that is increasingly seen as a key requirement by the U.S. military. To try and meet this demand, Lockheed Martin says it benefited from 1LMX — a program to 're-engineer its internal processes.' 1LMX is said to be the largest internal program ever undertaken by the company and is focused on 'automations and capabilities required to drive efficiency, increase velocity, and enhance … key captures and programs.' One of the first programs to leverage 1LMX was Rapid Dragon, another Air Force initiative in keeping with the Pentagon's doctrine of 'affordable mass.' Lockheed Martin and the Air Force started work on Rapid Dragon in early 2021 and, within the first 10 months, had conducted three customer exercises and a first flight. Rapid Dragon went on to yield four live-fire strike missions from airlifters, two in the United States and two abroad. As Lockheed Martin was preparing Rapid Dragon for fielding, the company was also 'developing affordable mass weapons to support the Air Force mission —and a few others.' This includes CMMT, which Lockheed Martin says is chiefly a manufacturing program rather than a technology development effort. As such, the aim was to drastically reduce the normal development path, producing a low-cost design that was '100 percent producible from the start.' Once a scalable product is achieved, 'performance-enhancing and mission-specific capabilities' will be introduced later 'as use cases and threats emerge.' CMMT has an open architecture and modular design. This means it can be manufactured using distributed supply chains and production lines that can surge to meet customer demands. At the same time, new capabilities can be easily added as required. For this reason, too, Lockheed Martin typically refers to CMMT not as a missile but as an air vehicle since it can be fitted with different types of sensors as well as a warhead. Potentially, it could also be easily adapted as an air-launched decoy. By utilizing 1LMX, Lockheed Martin was able to reduce the time required to get CMMT to a preliminary design review by 50 percent, the company says. At the same time, as mentioned, CMMT is not an all-new design, since it also draws from the earlier Speed Racer. A product of Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works advanced projects division, this was an experimental low-cost 'pathfinder' design that was developed first to demonstrate new digital engineering and advanced manufacturing methods — techniques that were also rolled into 1LMX. Like CMMT, Speed Racer was based around a modular architecture that allowed it to be relatively readily reconfigured for different mission sets. Speed Racer was also designed to be a low-cost vehicle, with a planned unit cost significantly under $2 million, and was not intended to be recovered after a in July 2022, Lockheed Martin unveiled four distinct uncrewed aircraft designs, one of which was CMMT, with Speed Racer being disclosed as the basis for it. An official project video released by Lockheed Martin depicted an F-35 launching a future CMMT from a wing pylon, a mode of employment that would negatively impact the jet's stealthy characteristics. Meanwhile, other similar designs have emerged, and it's notable that the current CMMT looks quite similar to Anduril's Barracuda, a new family of what that company is calling 'expendable autonomous air vehicles' that are scalable, highly modular, and already being flight-tested. However, Barracuda is just one of an increasing number of cheaper cruise missiles now in the works, and this is an area that has attracted particular interest from smaller firms, including some brand-new players. Shown: successful flight test of Barracuda-500, with vertical launch, autonomous flight, and precision target engagement. — Anduril Industries (@anduriltech) March 5, 2025 Overall, there's now a growing focus on less expensive, expandable, air-launched drones and munitions, driven by concerns about a potential conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific region. At the forefront of this is the Pentagon's Replicator initiative, which is accelerating work on low-cost air vehicles that could evolve into relatively cheap cruise missiles. 'As we envision the environment that we have to work in, we understand that in a global conflict, and the kind of conflict we're going to have, maybe against a peer competitor, being able to get mass on targets is important,' Rothstein said. 'We know we got to be able to produce at more rate,' Rothstein continued. 'And we know we have to work not only with some of the exquisite high-end weapons that we do so well, such as JASSM and LRASM, but we are also listening and understanding that there's a need to bring more affordable mass to that target. Think of [CMMT] like a low-cost cruise missile.' With a genesis that dates back several years, and with the experience of the Speed Racer and Rapid Dragon, Lockheed Martin will hope that its CMMT is well positioned for future success — especially the scalable mass production that is a central tenet of its design. Contact the author: thomas@
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Eyeing the Pacific, Lockheed unveils low-cost $150,000 cruise missile
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin plans to unveil a new "affordable" cruise missile on Monday with a cost of about $150,000 and a range of over 500 miles (800 km) as the defense contractor works to tap a U.S. need to deter Chinese ambitions in the Pacific. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has pushed U.S. and other countries' thinking about armaments toward a new strategy known as "affordable mass," meaning having plenty of relatively cheap weapons at the ready. The Common Multi-Mission Truck (CMMT) missile concept is a new product that aims to develop a family of low-cost modular weapons from Lockheed and its partners' existing catalog of components. The CMMT missile is designed to fill a gap between lower-cost standoff glide weapons and more expensive cruise missiles, Scott Callaway, Director, Affordable Mass, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control told Reuters in a recent interview. If the Pentagon decides to buy the new offering, Callaway said Lockheed could make 2,500 a year - once a production line was running. CMMT is "a subsonic, low-cost, long-range cruise missile," Callaway said. Its low-cost turbine engines cannot, however, compete with cruise missiles such as Lockheed's AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile. The JASSM is a 1,000-pound missile costing over $1.5 million per item. The industrial scale of the war in Ukraine has highlighted the necessity for deeper inventories of relatively inexpensive weapons. CMMT is designed to be modular, allowing for diverse variants to meet various mission requirements. These include a longer-range version - deployable from aircraft like the C-17, fighters and bombers - as well as a shorter-range version. A maritime strike variant is also envisioned, potentially to be employed in swarms with varying seeker mechanisms for greater effectiveness. Callaway said Lockheed Martin was aiming to sell the basic air vehicle for $150,000 per unit, which it considered competitive. The United States is amassing an arsenal of abundant and easily-made anti-ship weapons as part of efforts to push back against Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Eyeing the Pacific, Lockheed unveils low-cost $150,000 cruise missile
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin plans to unveil a new "affordable" cruise missile on Monday with a cost of about $150,000 and a range of over 500 miles (800 km) as the defense contractor works to tap a U.S. need to deter Chinese ambitions in the Pacific. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has pushed U.S. and other countries' thinking about armaments toward a new strategy known as "affordable mass," meaning having plenty of relatively cheap weapons at the ready. The Common Multi-Mission Truck (CMMT) missile concept is a new product that aims to develop a family of low-cost modular weapons from Lockheed and its partners' existing catalog of components. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. The CMMT missile is designed to fill a gap between lower-cost standoff glide weapons and more expensive cruise missiles, Scott Callaway, Director, Affordable Mass, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control told Reuters in a recent interview. If the Pentagon decides to buy the new offering, Callaway said Lockheed could make 2,500 a year - once a production line was running. CMMT is "a subsonic, low-cost, long-range cruise missile," Callaway said. Its low-cost turbine engines cannot, however, compete with cruise missiles such as Lockheed's AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile. The JASSM is a 1,000-pound missile costing over $1.5 million per item. The industrial scale of the war in Ukraine has highlighted the necessity for deeper inventories of relatively inexpensive weapons. CMMT is designed to be modular, allowing for diverse variants to meet various mission requirements. These include a longer-range version - deployable from aircraft like the C-17, fighters and bombers - as well as a shorter-range version. A maritime strike variant is also envisioned, potentially to be employed in swarms with varying seeker mechanisms for greater effectiveness. Callaway said Lockheed Martin was aiming to sell the basic air vehicle for $150,000 per unit, which it considered competitive. The United States is amassing an arsenal of abundant and easily-made anti-ship weapons as part of efforts to push back against Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region.
