DARPA’s new Longshot missile will begin testing this year, the agency says

DARPA’s Longshot missile is gearing up to begin flight testing this year, and it even has its own official X-Plane designation, as the X-68A.

On Tuesday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, put out a press release with a long-awaited update on what they call an “unmanned, air-launched vehicle capable of employing current air-to-air weapons, significantly increasing engagement range and mission effectiveness.”

As DARPA explains, Longshot has matured into a platform-agnostic air vehicle that can be launched from fighters like the F-15E and F-15EX, from bombers like the B-52, or from any number of other potential hosts. It will carry and deploy its own air-to-air missiles, namely the AIM-120 AMRAAM, at targets hundreds of miles away from the launching platform. DARPA even goes on to specify that Longshot could even be deployed via cargo aircraft with palletized launch systems, like Rapid Dragon, making it possible to launch what Joseph Trevithick at The Warzone rightfully described as a “counter-air screen” to rapidly engage a large volume of airborne targets.

According to DARPA, the Longshot has already completed extensive wind-tunnel testing, as well as tests of its weapons-release and parachute deployment functionality.

The missile is meant to offset perceived advantages provided by new extreme-range air-to-air weapons being fielded by Russia and China.

Most air-to-air engagements in the 21st century will likely happen at beyond visual range than in close quarters, but those engagements are still much more likely to happen at under 100 miles (or even under 70 miles), than they are much farther out. Possibly with that understanding in mind, DARPA kicked off the Longshot program in earnest back in 2021 by soliciting design concepts from General Atomics, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin for an “unmanned, air-launched vehicle capable of employing current air-to-air weapons, significantly increasing engagement range and mission effectiveness.”

The concept was to create a way to launch air-to-air missiles at closer ranges, and thus, closer to their “No Escape Zones,” which is defined as the range within which a target can’t escape just by maneuvering – without increasing risk for the launching aircraft.

The YFQ-42A drone. General Atomics has said that Longshot was a good candidate for the Increment 2 phase of the YFQ-42 program. (U.S. Air Force)

In March 2022, DARPA selected General Atomics’ design to move on to Phase 2 of the program, which focused on maturing it toward prototyping. Phase 3, which focused on fabricating the flight test vehicle, seemingly kicked off sometime in 2023.

General Atomics has a long history of fielding advanced drone platforms ranging from the MQ-1 Predator to the YFQ-42 CCA fighter drone in testing with the Air Force today. In fact, Longshot itself was even described by the president of General Atomics’ aeronautics division, Dave Alexander, as a good candidate for Increment 2 of the YFQ-42 CCA program.

DARPA has stated that the Longshot flight test vehicle is being equipped with a parachute for controlled landings after it expends all of the fuel it carries onboard, but that parachute is strictly intended for testing. In combat, Longshot will deploy its onboard munitions and then either be shot down or crash into the ground itself. And General Atomics and DARPA have designed this platform with the goal of keeping all of the really advanced targeting and computational work offboard to not jeopardize any sensitive technology that could survive the crash.

In effect, Longshot is little more than an air-breathing cruise missile with a two-way data link that allows it to draw updated target data not just from the launching aircraft, but from an entire network of assets in theater. As such, it doesn’t need to carry its own radar seeker or any other kind of pricey sensor package. Instead, it simply absorbs data from elsewhere and relays it to the AIM-120s its carrying.

Related: Mako: Arming the F-35 with hypersonic missiles

“With the mission systems architecture, LongShot will be able to communicate with line-of-sight systems that can detect threats — such as multi-role fighters and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms — as well as beyond line-of-sight systems that provide targeting information to engage enemy air assets. As a result, the existing inventory of AIM-120s from 4th generation platforms will be effective at longer ranges,” the Pentagon said.

However, despite the benefits Longshot may provide, the concept is not necessarily the most economically efficient one. Rather than making disposable drones to carry missiles out ahead of fighters and bombers, it might be more efficient to simply build larger missiles with greater range, or build more reusable drones to carry them. The U.S. is indeed pursuing all three of those approaches in separate programs – with collaborative combat aircraft, or fighter drones, of varying price points and capabilities in the works and a long list of new extreme-range air-to-air missiles under development.

In a large-scale fight against a nation like China, Longshots carrying AMRAAMs or even other weapons further down the road, could be a vital element of combined air-and-surface saturation attacks, with Longshots pouring into enemy airspace alongside other assets.

These are the sorts of situations Longshot was built to do: taking what you’ve got, and using it to do something it never could before. Or at least, that’s the plan.

Longshot was initially meant to begin flight testing more than a year ago, but despite DARPA singing the program’s praises, that first flight is now slated to happen sometime later this year. And while it may not be the warfare panacea everyone is always looking for, it does seem like a very important step toward the future of air warfare.

Feature Image: Artist’s rending of a swarm of Longshot missiles. (DARPA)

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