Showdown in the Sky: Why the Air Force Is Developing a New Air-to-Air Missile

David Axe

Security,

Think Russia and China. 

The U.S. Air Force is developing a new air-to-air missile.

The AIM-260 Joint Air Tactical Missile could fly farther than the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, U.S. forces’ current main air-to-air missile, can do. The extra range could help Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps fighters to counter Chinese and Russian planes armed with their own long-range missiles.

Air Force magazine reporter Rachel Cohen broke the news at an industry event in Ohio. “Air Force Weapons Program Executive Officer Brig. Gen. Anthony Genatempo told reporters in a June 20 interview here the service is working with Lockheed Martin, the Army and the Navy to field the Joint Advanced Tactical Missile in 2022,” Cohen wrote. “Work began about two years ago.”

“It has a range greater than AMRAAM, different capabilities onboard to go after that specific threat set, but certainly longer legs,” Genatempo told Cohen and other reporters. “As I bring up JATM production, AMRAAM production is kind of going to start tailing off.”

The maximum range of the AIM-120 is classified. Experts estimate it could be as great as 100 miles.

According to The War Zone reporter Joe Trevithick, the “threat set” Genatempo referenced is “future aerial opponents riding in advanced fighter jets, such as those that Russia and China are developing and are beginning to field.”

China’s J-20 stealth fighter entered squadron service in 2018. Russia has built more than a dozen Su-57 stealth fighter demonstrators. Despite lingering problems with the radar-evading Su-57, in May 2019 Russian president Vladimir Putin urged lawmakers to order 76 copies of the plane.

Russia and China “have also been developing new, longer-range air-to-air missiles to go with those aircraft,” Trevithick noted.