Urgent Military Need For ‘Affordable Mass’ Can’t Wait

Mass is one of the foundational concepts in military theory. It refers to the accumulation of warfighting capacity, usually with an eye to deterring or defeating an adversary.

America’s military is credited with having the world’s most advanced weapons, but because such weapons are costly, it is deficient in mass. Some experts believe that the current stock of long-range, precision-guided munitions would run low within weeks after a war with China commenced.

A seminal analysis of the problem was published by aerospace theorist Mark Gunzinger of the Mitchell Institute in 2021. Gunzinger’s assessment warned that over-investment in “exquisite” weapons would rob the Air Force of sufficient mass to defeat a near-peer adversary.

He called for an increased emphasis on low-cost precision munitions that could be delivered into contested airspace by stealthy strike aircraft, rather than relying on the weapon’s intrinsic features to reach distant targets.

Gunzinger’s analysis was a wakeup call for Air Force planners, who have embraced the notion of affordable mass to rethink what kind of weapons mix their service will need in the future.

However, the Air Force isn’t the only service with a shortfall in the number of highly accurate munitions needed to prosecute a future war, and there isn’t enough time to engineer a new generation of low-cost weapons before the need becomes acute.

What to do?

One solution is to modify existing weapons so that they can achieve pinpoint accuracy without becoming too expensive to purchase in large numbers.

A case in point is the Hydra rockets carried on Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine aircraft—both fixed-wing and rotary-wing. Hydra rockets are just about the cheapest air-to-ground munitions owned by the joint force that come with their own means of propulsion. They typically have a range of 3-7 miles.

Hydras were not precision weapons when they were first fielded. However, BAE Systems Inc, the U.S. arm of the sprawling British defense company, has developed a kit that converts them into smart weapons for a fraction of what a precision-guided munition of similar range costs.

The kit is called the Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, and it involves installing laser seekers on the rockets so they can home in on the energy of a target being illuminated by a laser.

The targeting laser, which is invisible to the naked eye, in effect provides a beacon for the modified Hydras, which have demonstrated a very high kill rate against diverse ground targets while causing minimal collateral danger.

The Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System thus bridges the gap between low-cost “dumb” munitions and more costly smart munitions. BAE was once a significant contributor to my think tank, so I have seen it accomplish similar wizardry by applying its electronics expertise to enhance the performance of warfighting systems.

The company apparently has identified low-cost upgrades to existing weapons as the most promising way the joint force can achieve affordable mass is a reasonable timeframe. Gunzinger estimated in his analysis that in a war with China or another near-peer adversary, the military might need to target 100,000 aimpoints

There is no way any of the military services can build an arsenal of smart weapons that big in this decade, unless they follow the route laid out by BAE Systems of converting existing weapons.

The evidence from Ukraine suggests that if traditional munitions rather than precision-guided weapons are used, the joint force might need millions of rounds to compensate for the resulting lack of accuracy.

No doubt about it, high-end, precision-guided munitions are very capable: If you fire a Long-Range Antiship Missile at a Chinese warship, that warship is nearly certain to be disabled.

The problem is that such weapons are difficult to afford in the quantities required, which is why Gunzinger concludes the Air Force needs to supplement its exquisite weapons with a new generation of “stand-in” precision munitions that can ride most of the way to targets on stealthy fighters and bombers.

But it takes a long time to develop a new generation of weapons. Like the other services, the Air Force needs a way of short-circuiting this process.

One solution might be found in a recent Air Force Research Lab contract awarded to BAE in the Maritime Weapon Innovation Program sometimes called “Quicksink.” Under the contract, the company will deliver a kit that provides a low-cost, all-weather seeker that can be retrofitted onto existing weapons, enabling them to precisely identify and engage surface targets “at great distances over a large area,” to quote a senior BAE scientist.

Another application of the same principle—installing a kit rather than starting from scratch—can be seen in BAE’s Long-Range Precision Guidance Kit for making GPS-guided rounds less vulnerable to jamming.

The company demonstrated last year that its kit could withstand the stress of being fired by an extended-range cannon and then enable a 155 mm projectile to maneuver to its target.

Military planners expect that in the future, U.S. forces will face more capable defenses that can defeat incoming weapons using both kinetic and non-kinetic means. That means that whatever weapons the joint force buys must be able to counter moves like jamming while being sufficiently affordable to tolerate some attrition before reaching targets.

BAE Systems Inc. isn’t the only company pursuing low-cost avenues to making munitions more agile and accurate, but it has demonstrated diverse applications of a low-cost solution to current munitions shortfalls that may be the only way to be ready for war in this decade.

The military will still need exquisite weapons for some targets, like deeply-buried command posts, but if munitions stocks are to last more that a few weeks in a major war, it’s hard to see what the alternative is to the kind of affordable mass BAE Systems is enabling.

As noted above, BAE Systems was formerly a significant contributor to my think tank.