Key Points and Summary: The U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin are developing Rapid Dragon, a program to arm cargo planes, specifically C-130s, with palletized missile systems.
-Rapid Dragon leverages digital engineering to quickly produce the Common Multi-Mission Truck (CMMT), an affordable, mass-attack missile intended for large-scale engagements.
Key Point #1 – This capability allows cargo aircraft to provide overwhelming offensive firepower, complementing more expensive precision-guided munitions with cost-effective saturation attacks.
Key Point #2 – Successfully tested in live-fire trials, this system offers tactical advantages in great-power warfare scenarios, such as potential conflicts with China, by allowing rapid, flexible, and affordable mass airstrikes, greatly enhancing U.S. air-ground combat capabilities.
Inside Rapid Dragon: Arming U.S. Cargo Aircraft for Mass Missile Strikes
The U.S. Air Force some years ago recognized it would be useful and tactically advantageous to arm cargo planes with missiles.
This arrangement gives commanders a good deal of additional options they can select from when determining how to support attacking forces.
Arming C-130s
C-130s are a good fit for this tactic. C-130s have long been workhorse cargo planes able to land in austere environments to deliver forces and supplies in “hot,” high-risk landing zones.
In recent years, the service has been working to arm C-130s with palletized weapon configurations intended to fire groups of missiles on targets in support of air-ground missions.
The vision has developed in large part as a joint Lockheed Martin-U.S. Air Force effort to field a new system called Rapid Dragon.
“The Rapid Dragon journey began with a simple proposition: that the Air Force launch its affordable mass revolution by showing the viability of palletized deployment—and do it fast,” a Lockheed press release says.
In support of this mission, Lockheed Martin used digital engineering to create a series of “compact, low-cost air vehicles” intended to provide Rapid Dragon with mass-attack capability that relies on groups of a new weapon called a Common Multi-Mission Truck (CMMT), according to the company.
The Pentagon has made meaningful use of digital engineering. This technique enables developers to design, test, and assess weapons systems in a computer-simulated environment before getting to the business of bending metal and actually building prototypes.
Computer simulations have become extremely effective, very accurately replicating the performance parameters of emerging weapons systems, something which enables designers to make adjustments early in a platform’s developmental process.
This expedites production and lowers costs, because a military service does not need to build a number of different prototypes. Rather, it can assess different design options in a digital capacity.
CMMT “Live Fire”
Lockheed Martin and the Air Force have been conducting live-fire tests to assess the “feasibility of palletized deployment in a tactical environment” to refine requirements and ensure the weapons function as intended.
The advantage of “massing” attack is easy enough to understand, because air-to-ground and air-to-air weapons are very expensive. The use of CMMT, for example, is intended to address this challenge, by enabling “mass” attacks using weapons that cost a great deal less.
The CMMT missiles may be less exquisite in some respects than other air-fired weapons, but they are intended to be used en masse to blanket identified targets with munitions. Certainly using larger numbers of lower-cost missiles makes mass attack a much more realistic operational option, introducing new offensive air-warfare variables.
Lockheed Martin is flying Common Multi-Mission Trucks in two configurations: an air-launched variant that deploys aboard U.S. Air Force airlifters, fighters, and bombers to put affordable mass on the target; and a smaller, long-range option that deploys from rotary-wing platforms.
The CMMT will still make use of precision guidance while introducing the well-known tactical advantage associated with mass fires.
Once a target is identified, or an enemy formation is located and successfully targeted by drones, satellites, and other aircraft, there is a limited amount of time to suppress, attack, and disable the target.
Mass Attack
Many missiles in the Air Force inventory are built with new generations of sensing, guidance technology, and hardening systems to ensure effective precision targeting. But firing many of these weapons at one time could prove both extremely expensive, and not at all necessary.
Next-generation guidance and targeting capabilities, such as two-way datalinks or the ability to adjust targets in flight, are much less necessary once a target is identified and verified.
These are the cases in which CMMT can achieve an intended combat effect without having to use up large numbers of the most technologically advanced and expensive weapons in the world.
The concept of ordering mass air attacks with CMMT would address tactical realities associated with major great-power warfare. Such a contingency would introduce the need to blanket broad enemy-controlled areas with large-scale attacks.
In this respect, the CMMT could prove effective in any major engagement with China in the Pacific, given the sheer size of the People’s Liberation Army.
About the Author: Kris Osborn
Kris Osborn is the Military Technology Editor of 19FortyFive and President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
