- This month, the U.S. Navy revealed that the SM-6 missile is now operational on Super Hornet fighter jets.
- SM-6 was originally designed as a ship-based air defense missile—now, it’s the world’s longest-range air-to-air missile.
- As the Pentagon seeks to outpace China and Russia, there will likely be more cross-use of existing weapons designed to preserve America’s lead on the battlefield.
Earlier this month, the aviation world was rocked with the revelation that the SM-6 air defense missile, previously used to arm warships, had made its way to arm Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet strike fighters. The result was suddenly the world’s longest-range air-to-air missile, outdistancing its Russian and Chinese counterparts by a wide margin. The missile’s success will likely lead to other pairings that take advantage of America’s deep arsenal of high-tech weapons.
XAIM-147B
In June 2024, an aviation photographer snapped images of a Navy F/A-18F Strike Fighter carrying a SM-6 air defense missile. The SM-6, developed for Navy warships, has a range of about 275 miles. That’s three times greater than the publicly stated range of AMRAAM, the U.S. Military’s current long range missile. China’s longest range air-to-air missile, the PL-15 (“Thunderbolt-15”) has a range of about 186 miles.
Just one month later, on the eve of the multinational Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises in Hawaii, another photographer caught a Super Hornet at Joint Base Hickam-Pearl Harbor with two of what the Navy now calls the XAIM-147B—the air-launched SM-6. In an email to FlightGlobal, the service confirmed that the XAIM-174B was “operationally deployed” with the fleet, meaning it’s ready for combat, a step much further along than observers outside the Navy originally believed.
Adapting the XAIM-147B to arm fighter jets has a number of advantages. For starters, the missile was already developed and ready to go, and the Navy also already had a concept of operation, or how it would use the missile in combat. Lastly, there was already a production line set up to build what was then called the SM-6, shaving months or even years off the time it takes to get the missiles to the fleet.
This leap in capability was only possible because the U.S. military already had a missile, developed for other platforms, that could be adapted to fighter jets. America’s military-industrial complex's vast pool of weapons means this sort of adaptive innovation will almost certainly happen again.
HARMs and “FrankenSAMs”
The war in Ukraine, and the need to supply the Ukrainian military with equipment to beat back the Russian army, has resulted in similar surprise adaptations of American equipment. American HARM anti-radar missiles, designed during the Cold War to hunt down Soviet air defense radars, were adapted to ex-Soviet Su-27 “Flanker” and MiG-29 “Fulcrum” fighter jets flown by Ukraine’s Air Force. Though they were once thought totally incompatible, someone somehow made the combo of Soviet and American avionics systems fit like a glove.
In another example, Czech and Polish engineers successfully integrated American missiles with Ukraine’s aging Buk air defense systems. The upgraded Buks, nicknamed “FrankenSAMs,” are armed with Sea Sparrow missiles, designed to protect American warships from air attacks, and Sidewinder air-to-air missiles to take down Russian drones and other aerial threats.
One of the most dramatic adaptations was Ukraine’s use of Stinger missiles to shoot down Russian cruise missiles. The FIM-92 Stinger is a short-range, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile designed to engage fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. In August 2023, a Ukrainian air defense crewman shot down a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile. The Kh-101 is a subsonic missile designed, much like the American Tomahawk, to fly low and evade enemy air defenses. That puts it in the engagement envelope of missiles like Stinger. While it was theoretically possible, no one predicted such an engagement might actually happen.
What’s Next?
The Russia-Ukraine war caught most of the world by surprise, and as a result, Ukraine’s allies have scrambled to arm the country with a hodgepodge of both new and old weapons. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan, however, is widely predicted. What kind of innovative weapons could the U.S. develop and deploy to help beat back a Chinese attack?
A Chinese invasion would succeed or fail based on its ability to deliver large numbers of troops across the 121-mile wide Taiwan Strait. Sea mines, laid in the path of the invaders, would both sink troop transports and throw a monkey wrench in the People’s Liberation Army’s timetable, as it struggled to identify, avoid, or clear the minefields. In peacetime, however, mines are a hazard to civilian ships, especially in and around ports whose capture would be vital to the war effort.
One possible solution is a rocket-delivered sea mine that combines two existing American weapon systems. The U.S. Navy’s Quickstrike mine is an ordinary aircraft bomb fitted with a ship-detecting fuze. The Saab/Boeing Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) is an ordinary aircraft bomb fitted with the JDAM satellite guidance package, pop-out glider wings and rocket motor. GLSBD is launched from M142 HIMARS rocket trucks made famous in Ukraine and has a range of up to 93 miles.
The combination of Quickstrike and GLSDB would make for a potent new weapon system: an instantly deployable minefield that could be laid moments after Taiwanese officials sounded the alarm. A platoon of four HIMARS rocket trucks could lay up to 24 mines in a minute or less, creating an instant no-go zone for the Chinese Navy.
A rocket-delivered minefield would also eliminate the risk standing minefields pose to civilian shipping in peacetime, seeding the field only when absolutely necessary. Thanks to GPS, the Taiwanese Army would know exactly where the mines are, ensuring they could be retrieved once the war was over.
As China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran all ramp up aggressive activities, there is no shortage of threats to the U.S. and its allies, from ballistic missiles to invasion fleets. Many of these threats may not need entirely new weapon systems to counter them. A little imagination could turn a pair of existing weapons, like Super Hornet fighters and the SM-6 missile, into the military equivalent of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups: two great tastes that go great together ... and also manage to deter a war from actually happening.
Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he's generally in favor of it. Kyle’s articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News, and others. He lives in San Francisco.
