The U.S. just very quietly revealed a secret ship-hunting capability of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber that might not draw many headlines, but will definitely get the attention of Chinese military planners.
Earlier this week, on an X post from Air Force Global Strike Command, the U.S. Air Force announced that the B-2 Spirit can launch Lockheed Martin’s AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles.
Notably, the service shared pictures of the B-2 dropping the missile in a live-fire, ship-sinking exercise in the Western Pacific.
Adding a new weapon to a bomber like the B-2 starts with software changes and mission system integration. It then continuous with physical and mechanical integration that includes mounting hardware, connector buses, and drop tests to make sure the weapon deploys properly and isn’t flung back into the aircraft by the slipstream. Then there’s a lot of flight testing that ultimately leads to operational certification. Overall, this is an expensive process that often takes years to complete.
As a result, we usually know about a new weapon being integrated into combat aircraft like the F-35 or B-2 a long time before the aircraft ever actually drops one. For example, we are now at least 19 months into flight testing the very same missile on the F-35C and so far, only the first phase of testing has been completed.
But the U.S. is very good at keeping airplane-shaped secrets, and it turns out, America’s heavy payload stealth bomber clearly started integration work on this weapon even earlier than the F-35 – so much earlier that it’s already slinging them at a decommissioned Austin-class amphibious assault ship, the former USS Juneau.
The news are important because AGM-158C LRASM is arguably the most advanced and capable of Lockheed Martin’s stealthy Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-off Missile line. This weapon is designed to have a small radar cross-section and is powered by an air-breathing turbofan engine, just like a fighter jet. This allows it to skim the wavetops as it closes with targets from upwards of 575 miles away, where it delivers a 1,000-pound penetrating blast fragmentation warhead that’s designed to penetrate the exterior hull of a ship before detonating with the explosive equivalent of 50 Hellfire missiles. That’s more power than the Mk 48 heavy torpedoes carried by American attack submarines.
More terrifyingly, the LRASM was designed to fly and hunt autonomously in collaborative packs, using a combination of advanced onboard sensors and artificial intelligence. The missile uses GPS-supported inertial navigation to reach a general target area, meaning it can navigate even in jammed environments.
Then, once it reaches the vicinity of the enemy fleet, it switches over to onboard infrared electro-optical sensors that see the ships ahead of it. It then uses an onboard datalink to prioritize and distribute targets for maximum effect among the missile swarm, and then, it uses those same optics to identify the most vulnerable point on its assigned ship to make impact.
And while details about this newly announced capability are limited, the LRASM has the exact same exterior form factor as its sister weapon, the AGM-158B JASSM-Extended Range and we know the B-2 can carry 16 of them. So, that means a single stealth bomber can now launch a whole pack of 16 stealthy AI-enabled cruise missiles at Chinese fleets from literally hundreds of miles away without anyone ever knowing it was there.
And of course, when the B-2 wants to get a bit closer to those Chinese ships, well then it can turn to Boeing’s anti-ship JDAM cruise missile from upwards of 345 miles out, or the glide bomb version from 45 miles out.
In other words, the B-2 might just be the scariest ship-hunting platform on the planet today.
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