The Air Force Isn’t Ready for What Is Coming

Article Summary and Key Points: China’s naval dominance, with over 700 combat-capable ships, significantly outnumbers America’s roughly 300 vessels. To counter this disadvantage without overspending on expensive anti-ship missiles, the U.S. Air Force Research Lab developed “Quicksink,” a cost-effective anti-ship munition derived from existing JDAM guidance kits.

-Quicksink transforms low-cost gravity bombs into precision-guided ship-killers by adding radar and infrared sensors, accurately striking below the waterline to maximize damage.

-At approximately $70,000 to $250,000 per unit—far cheaper than standard anti-ship missiles—Quicksink can decisively neutralize large enemy warships at scale, potentially shifting the naval balance in America’s favor without overwhelming defense budgets.

Quicksink: America’s Game-Changing Weapon Against China’s Massive Navy

China now employs the largest surface fleet of combat-capable vessels on the planet with a total strength of 700 large-hulled ships between its navy, militarized coast guard, and maritime militia.

And while the U.S. Navy does bring more gross tonnage to bear than the aggressive Pacific state, its overall fleet strength is only around 300 ships and in the event of a conflict in the Pacific far fewer ships could without leaving other American or allied interests unprotected. 

This poses a number of big problems for American forces, as the anti-ship missiles employed by surface warships range in price tend to cost anywhere from $2 million to $4 million a piece, and more importantly, are difficult to reload while at sea (though the Navy is working to address this issue).

Other highly capable anti-ship weapons, like the LRASM, are even pricier — at roughly $3.2 million a shot. There are certainly circumstances that justify the high price of these weapons, but at scale, the U.S. runs the risk of losing a war of financial attrition by relying solely on these budget-busting missiles to take on China’s Navy. 

The United States needs a highly effective, but lower-cost means of engaging large surface combatants to be able to overcome this numerical disadvantage. And that’s exactly what the Air Force Research Lab had in mind when it fielded Quicksink; a novel weapon made up of existing hardware simply assembled and leveraged in a new and highly effective way. 

Quicksink is really little more than good old fashioned JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) modified specifically for anti-ship warfare. JDAMs are GPS-assisted inertial navigation guidance kits that can be mounted directly onto the sort of low-cost unguided gravity bombs the U.S. has maintained large stockpiles of since the Cold War, effectively turning these “dumb” bombs into precision-guided ordnance. 

Quicksink builds upon the JDAM’s capabilities by incorporating additional forms of guidance into the bolt-on kit; namely a radar seeker in the nose and an infrared imaging seeker installed in a new side fairing.

As a result, while JDAMs are limited to striking stationary targets at set coordinates, Quicksink uses the JDAM guidance kits only to get into the general vicinity of a known target ship before transitioning over to its radar and infrared sensors to identify the target vessel, calculate its course and rate of travel, and plot its terminal guidance to a specific point alongside the hull of the vessel just below the waterline. 

This degree of precision makes the otherwise unguided BLU-109 dumb bomb into such a potent ship-killer that its destructive capabilities have been compared directly to the most deadly anti-ship weapons in service, heavy torpedoes like the U.S. Navy’s Mk. 48.

And like any JDAM, it can be dropped from as far as 15 miles out from aircraft like the B-2 Spirit, making it all but impossible for local air defenses to engage the dropping aircraft.

In the future, the weapon could also be carried internally by stealth fighters like the carrier-based F-35C. 

The Air Force Research Lab believes Quicksink kits, which currently cost roughly $200,000 each to procure, will drop in price to roughly $50,000 each when serial production begins, but even if it doesn’t, the BLU-109 bomb it rides on rings in at only around $20,000 — making this a weapon that could range in price from roughly $70,000 to maybe as much as $250,000 with the capacity to sink even very large warships with a single strike. 

And, if this concept does continue to mature, it’s potentially feasible to see a Quickstrike-ER roll out down the road, incorporating the JDAM-ER’s deployable glide wings to extend the reach of this budget-busting ship killer out to 45 miles or more. 

About the Author: Alex Hollings, Defense Expert 

Alex Hollings is the editor of the Sandboxx blog and a former U.S. Marine that writes about defense policy and technology. He lives with his wife and daughter in Georgia.