The air war over Vietnam saw some incredible dogfights, but it still may surprise you to learn that the mighty B-52 heavy bomber successfully shot down not one but two Vietnamese MiG 21 fighter jets near the tail end of the conflict.

The venerable Boeing B-52 Stratofortress has been flying since 1952, and thanks to a series of upgrades, will continue to for decades to come.

The massive jet bomber may have been designed in the 1940s (in fact, it was designed almost entirely in a single weekend), but its massive airframe and eight-jet-engine-design have proven so capable over the years that the B-52 is now expected to outlast newer bombers that were developed to replace it. As the B-21 Raider inches toward production, both America’s B-2 Spirit (stealth bomber) and B-1B Lancer (supersonic bomber) are expected to be put out to pasture, while the legendary B-52 keeps right on flying.

The B-52 BUFF (as service members tend to call it) has been flying combat missions for so long that, at first, it actually used to come equipped with a tail gunner position to defend the slow and steady bomber against encroaching fighters. Of course, as fighter technology continued to improve, the United States moved away from manning guns on their heavy payload bombers and toward having them fly with their own fighter escorts.

While most people tend to think of World War II when they imagine gun turrets on a bomber, the most recent enemy fighter to be shot down by a B-52’s guns was actually in the 1970s.

Related: The first American to score an air-to-air kill wasn’t even supposed to be there

It was Christmas Eve 1972, and the B-52D bomber known as Diamond Lil was flying a bombing run over Thai Nguyen when its tail gunner, Airman 1st Class Albert Moore, spotted a Soviet-built Vietnamese MiG-21 closing with them fast.

“I observed a target in my radar scope 8:30 o’clock, low at 8 miles,” Moore wrote six days later in a formal statement. “I immediately notified the crew, and the bogie started closing rapidly. It stabilized at 4,000 yards 6:30 o’clock. I called the pilot for evasive action and the EWO (electronic warfare officer) for chaff and flares.”

For Moore, it had to be a nerve-racking moment. Only one other B-52 tail gunner had scored a successful kill against a Vietnamese fighter, though more than 30 B-52s had been shot down throughout the conflict. In fact, the first time a B-52 had ever shot down a MiG had only happened a few days prior. In other words, the odds seemed pretty squarely stacked against Moore and his crew.

“When the target got to 2,000 yards, I notified the crew that I was firing. I fired at the bandit until it ballooned to three times in intensity then suddenly disappeared from my radar scope at approximately 1,200 yards, 6:30 low. I expended 800 rounds in 3 bursts.”

Those 800 rounds poured out of Moore’s four .50 caliber M3 Machine Guns. The kill was confirmed by another tail gunner named Tech. Sgt. Clarence Chute, who was aboard a nearby B-52 called Ruby 2.

“I went visual and saw the bandit on fire and falling away,” wrote Sergeant Chute. “Several pieces of the aircraft exploded, and the fireball disappeared in the undercast at my 6:30 position.”

Moore would go down in history as not only the second B-52 gunner to score a kill against a MiG, but also as the last bomber-gunner to ever engage enemy fighters in American service, despite tailguns surviving on the B-52 until the 1990s.

Related: The Air Force’s dogfighting AI is already roughly equal in skill to career pilots

Today, the B-52 remains in service as an essential part of America’s nuclear triad, and believe it or not, as a close air support aircraft in uncontested airspace. The B-52’s long loiter time and massive payload magazine make it an excellent choice for precision strikes against ground targets, where it’s seen use in both Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years.

Thanks to a slew of cockpit upgrades and improved weapon system storage, the Air Force intends to keep flying the mighty BUFF past the century mark, with some B-52s expected to remain in service as late as 2060.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in December 2020. It has been edited for republication.

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Earlier this month, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall made history, riding in the cockpit of an AI-piloted F-16 Fighting Falcon through a series of simulated close-quarters air-to-air engagements, more commonly known as good old-fashioned dogfights. These notional scraps pitted the Air Force’s most advanced “AI agents,” a term used to describe the artificial intelligence models devised to pilot tactical aircraft, against highly-trained human fighter pilots with both notional 20mm cannons and close-range air-to-air missiles.

“Basically, when you’re in an engagement like that, what the two pilots are trying to do to gain an advantage is fly the most optimal possible trajectory for their aircraft… so you can get a missile off, and he’s trying to do the same to you,” Kendall said at an AI expo event hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project in Washington, DC.

“So the skill of the pilots is really important. We were up against a pilot who had two or three thousand hours of experience. He was very good. It was roughly an even fight. But against a less experienced pilot the AI… [and] the automation would have performed better,” he added.

Saying that it was a “roughly even fight” against a pilot with some 2,000 to 3,000 hours in the cockpit of the F-16 may seem like a relatively simple comparison, but this single comment suggests an extremely high degree of capability in the AI agent.

Air Force fighter pilots optimally see between 200 and 250 hours of flight time in their aircraft per year, though those figures can be curtailed for any number of reasons. That means that a pilot with 2,000 and 3,000 hours has between 10 and 15 years of experience, if not more, since unit functions, follow-on education and training, command billets, and more often hinder flight hour accrual for even the most capable of pilots as their careers press on.

In 2014, the Air Force reported that only around 300 pilots in the world had accrued more than 3,000 hours in the F-16 Fighting Falcon since it entered service in 1978; supporting that claim, F-16.net currently lists only 311 pilots ever to achieve this distinction.

In other words, the Air Force Secretary currently places the branch’s F-16-piloting AI as roughly comparable in dogfighting skill to some of the nation’s most experienced and capable aviators.

Kendall rode in the front seat of the Air Force’s heavily modified X-62 VISTA – a Block 30 F-16D that has previously incorporated technology, including multi-axis thrust-vector control, not found on any of the Air Force’s operational Vipers. Despite its three-decade-spanning tenure as a part of the Air Force’s Test Pilot School, the aircraft now sits at the forefront of America’s efforts to propel air combat into an entirely new era – one where conventionally crewed aircraft are accompanied by their own formations of AI-enabled drone fighters.

Riding behind Kendall in the cockpit was one of the Air Force’s few VISTA-qualified test pilots, trained to handle not just the unique capabilities of the test bed aircraft, but its new AI software as well. At any point in the exercises, that test pilot could have shut down the AI agent and taken control of the aircraft if necessary for the safety of the jet or its occupants, though that has yet to occur in any of the test flights taking place since this effort made the leap to real aircraft in December 2022.

“So we did about 10 or a dozen different situations where I was in the front seat and I had a button on my stick where basically I initiated the automation,” Kendall explained.

Despite the seemingly common perception of AI as inherently superior to human pilots for these sorts of combat applications, the Air Force still has a lot of work to do before this technology finds its way onto the real battlefield.

“That technology is not quite ready yet, but it’s making very good progress. We got to see three different versions of it. They all performed, I think, in a way which suggests to me personally very strongly that we’re on the right path and we’re gonna get to where we’re headed,” Kendall said.

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On February 3, 2024 – just shy of two years after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, the Russian Navy rolled out its fifth modernized Borei-A Class nuclear ballistic missile submarine from the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk, Northern Russia. This new class of undersea predator is alleged to be significantly stealthier than previous Russian submarine designs thanks to its use of pump-jet propulsion – a first for Russia. Russian media has claimed this new submarine is five times quieter than Russia’s latest nuclear-powered Akula-class submarines, and two times quieter than America’s Virginia-class attack submarines.

With at least two more Borei-A Class vessels already in production, it’s clear that, despite Russia’s military woes in Ukraine, the country remains heavily invested in maintaining and extending its potent nuclear strike capabilities, on which Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to increasingly rely to stave off direct Western interference with his military objectives.

But Russia’s undersea fleet may soon be facing a new kind of threat… one that lurks deeper than any of their submarines can sail, hibernating with nearly no detectable electromagnetic emissions, and capable of rapidly coming to life and soaring through the sea like an exotic predator combined with a stealth bomber, taking on submersible threats with a variety of potential payloads, before once again anchoring itself to the seabed to lay in wait once more.

On April 8, Northrop Grumman officially unveiled its new prototype deep sea drone, the Manta Ray uncrewed underwater vehicle (UUV). This new undersea drone is designed to conduct extended-duration autonomous operations at long ranges with minimal need for human support, according to the firm, making it uniquely suited for a wide variety of undersea scientific and potential combat operations.

Northrop Grumman describes the new Manta Ray drone as: “A new class of UUV, it is an extra-large glider that will operate long-duration, long-range and payload-capable undersea missions without need for on-site human logistics.”

While details about Manta Ray and its full range of intended capabilities remain sparse, we can glean some information about the goals informing this endeavor through the contracting documents and announcements released by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, leading up to this point.

The undersea path to Manta Ray

In March 2020, DARPA awarded developmental contracts to Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Navatek to mature concepts for what DARPA Manta Ray Program Manager Dr. Kyle Woerner describes as “an autonomous underwater vehicle that’s out operating on its own, harvesting energy, and completing whatever mission it’s given.” By December 2021, the field narrowed to Northrop Grumman and Navatek (now known as Pacmar Technologies) with Phase 2 contracts awarded to each for the construction of full-scale technology demonstrators.

In September 2023, Pacmar Technologies’ Manta Ray sub-scale prototype began “splash testing,” meant to verify the forthcoming platform’s sensor suite and key autonomy behaviors for the full-scale platform. And now, Northrop Grumman has unveiled its own full-scale technology demonstrator, which, according to the company, is modular to support easy shipping for expeditionary deployments, and has the ability to anchor to the sea floor and hibernate for extended periods to reserve power.

Northrop Grumman’s Manta Ray design resembles its namesake fish, adopting a similar “sea-glider” shape.

Based on the Manta Ray program description, also penned by Dr. Woerner, the driving factor in this effort was to field a deep-sea drone that could specifically operate for long durations without the need for logistical support. While not specified in this language, the endeavor seems to prioritize both long-duration deep-sea operations and the force-multiplying effect of passing these roles off to a drone with minimal support requirements.

“If successful, this new class of UUV will give the combatant commander an amplification of capacity without disrupting current operations by remaining independent of manned vessels and ports once deployed,” Dr. Woerner wrote.

Extended-duration operations at extreme depths

To minimize the logistical requirements of the drone, DARPA’s documentation calls for novel energy management and even energy-harvesting techniques for use in dea sea environments – or creative new ways to minimize energy draw and even to supplement energy stores using its environment – as well as a wide variety of new onboard systems designed to minimize power requirements, from propulsion to threat detection and beyond. A fourth company, Metron Inc, has also been contracted to mature technologies in that specific vein.

Another evident element of the Manta Ray program is to operate at extreme depths that would otherwise be impossible, or economically infeasible, for Navy or civilian submersibles.

“A main driver for wanting to go toward underwater vehicles in their ability to go to depths that humans and many human systems are not able to go to,” Dr. Woerner explained on the Voices from DARPA podcast in October 2022.

Woerner went on to explain that DARPA chose the name Manta Ray as it emphasized the program’s aim of fielding a disruptive submersible technology that departs from the sleek torpedo-like design that’s so common in military submarines, and instead leans into the efficient shapes of undersea life – like the large and exotic-looking Manta Ray fish. While Woerner clarified that DARPA was happy to accept designs that didn’t resemble the Manta Ray found in nature, Northrop Grumman seemed to take the idea to heart when designing its submersible.

Manta Ray will harvest electrical energy from its environment

To understand the value Manta Ray can provide, it’s first important to recognize the limitations inherent to current-state deep-submersible technology. Most of today’s uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs) are tethered directly to surface vessels for power and support, and the few that aren’t still need to keep support (usually in the form of a crewed ship on the surface) nearby because the systems can usually only operate for periods of hours, or in a few extreme cases, days.

“So you can either chase them around with a host vessel, which is expensive and takes a lot of time and requires humans above them – and you have to offer them care and feeding and everything else that comes with that – or you can find a way to extend endurance under the sea,” Dr. Woerner explained. “So, part of this project from a military utility perspective is reducing the burden, if you will, on these human-operated ships.”

The single most limiting factor for UUVs today is power storage. A large submersible requires a great deal of power for propulsion alone, before you even consider onboard control systems, sensor suites, and any potential payloads. A significant area of focus for Manta Ray, beyond designing systems with very low power requirements, is finding ways to draw power from the submersible’s operating environment.

“One of the things that’s really interesting about ocean resources is that they are persistent,” explains Kelley Ruehl, a research and development mechanical engineer with Sandia National Laboratories who specializes in wave-energy conversion, or deriving electrical energy from the power of ocean and river currents. But Ruehl, who is serving as an advisor on the Manta Ray effort, says there are several other potential avenues for power production under the sea beyond capturing the power of currents, like salinity gradient power, which can be derived in a variety of ways like Reversed Electro Dialysis (RED).

RED uses a stack of alternating cathode and anode exchanging perm-selective membranes, with the compartments between membranes filled alternately with fresh water and seawater. The differences in salinity in the water generates a voltage over the membranes that can be captured and converted into electrical power.

Another potential solution Northrop Grumman has explored, in partnership with renewable energy company Seatrec, is the Mission Unlimited Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) Station, which requires the deployment of a separate “Thermal Energy Pod” that creates electrical energy by harnessing the power of the ocean’s “thermal gradient,” or the mixing of warm and cooler currents. In effect, UUVs like Manta Ray can use the Thermal Energy Pod like a gas station, returning to fill up any time their onboard stores are running low.

Overcoming the communication problem

The insulated connectors between the Manta Ray and the Thermal Energy Pod can also accommodate the transfer of data to command elements on shore. That uploaded data is then transferred into small devices Northrop calls “data bubbles” that can be deployed from the Energy Pod to relay vital information back to command elements elsewhere in the world.

“When released from the station, they float to the surface and begin using their RF satellite communications antenna to transmit data to shore, to a satellite, or to a ship.” explained Brian Theobald, chief engineer for Northrop’s Manta Ray program.

This could help to address one of the biggest challenges facing any deep-sea platform whether crewed or uncrewed – communications.

Military platforms that operate on or above the surface rely heavily on radio communications, but radio waves cannot penetrate the oceans’ highly conductive saltwater. As a result, America’s nuclear ballistic missile submarines rely on Very Low Frequency (or VLF) transmissions relayed via massive sprawling antenna complexes positioned in five installations around the world. If those stations are taken out by enemy attack, a fleet of specially-equipped TACAMO (Take Charge and Move Out) aircraft will deploy five-mile-long antennas then fly in tightly overlapping circles above the ocean to transmit what effectively amounts to a text message to submarines deep beneath the waves.

Manta Ray may be equipped for VLF communications as well, but due to the inherent limitations associated with these sorts of transmissions, the “data bubbles” released from Thermal Energy Pods could provide a simple means of standard communications at regular intervals.

This also means that an uncrewed submarine meant for extended-duration missions needs to be able to operate largely autonomously, with very little direct interaction with the world above. As such, Manta Ray will need to adopt, or adapt, some means of autonomous control, potentially through the use of AI.

Power production is far from the only challenge Manta Ray needs to overcome in order to have a palpable strategic impact on maritime defense. Novel solutions for corrosion control, undersea obstacle avoidance, and the extreme degree of reliability required for extended operations in such unforgiving environments also need to be developed.

Manta Ray could provide a big boost to anti-submarine warfare

While there are several potential military and scientific applications for Manta Ray, one strategically valuable place to start might be in countering adversary submersibles – specifically, those armed with nuclear weapons.

Despite Russia’s poor performance throughout the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s undersea capabilities remain among the best in the world, and as such, represent a potent threat to American security. Currently, Russia operates two classes of nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines, including five Delta IV submarines and eight Borei-Class vessels of different iterations. Despite Russia’s sanction-based economic woes, production continues on three additional modernized Borei-A-class vessels. Russia’s Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System, also known as Poseidon or Kanyon, is a high-speed nuclear torpedo designed to travel distances as great as 5,400 nautical miles (6,200 miles) at speeds as high as a claimed 54 knots (a shocking 62 miles per hour), before lying in wait inside enemy harbors, waiting for the command to detonate its nuclear payload.

Initial Russian claims suggested that Status 6 could carry a massive 50-megaton nuclear payload, though that has since been revised to a more realistic two megatons. Nonetheless, a two-megaton blast would still be roughly 100 times larger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. There remains some debate about whether or not such a detonation could create an irradiated tidal wave, with recent analyses largely disregarding the potential for this threat. Yet, such a detonation inside an American harbor would, nonetheless, be catastrophic.

This threat is more potent than many realize. In 2017, a Russian military documentary series alleged that a fleet of Russian Shchuka-B-class submarines armed with long-range cruise missiles was dispatched with orders to take up positions just outside American ports with U.S. Navy installations. The Russian Navy claimed to have completed the mission successfully, saying that they managed to operate just outside American territorial waters (extended 12 nautical miles to sea) without being detected.

The United States did not publicly respond to Russia’s claims — and likely for good reason. Had the Pentagon dismissed the Russian claims as false, Russian information operations would have spun that as tacit confirmation that America was unable to detect their presence. If the U.S. Navy did indeed detect and track the presence of these Russian submarines, revealing that could inadvertently provide some indication as to just what sorts of detection capabilities the United States does have, which may prompt renewed investment from the Russian Navy to find ways to circumvent it.

But regardless of the claim’s truth, the U.S. Navy took the threat seriously. Shortly after Russian officials made this claim, Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer announced the United States was re-establishing its North Atlantic-based 2nd Fleet specifically to counter emerging Russian threats.

This decision echoed sentiments published two years prior by then-Naval Forces Europe commander Adm. James Foggo III.

“Russian submarines are prowling the Atlantic, testing our defenses, confronting our command of the seas, and preparing the complex underwater battlespace to give them an edge in any future conflict,” Foggo wrote in U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings. “Not only have Russia’s actions and capabilities increased in alarming and confrontational ways, its national-security policy is aimed at challenging the United States and its NATO allies and partners.”

Since then, the U.S. has also renewed investments into new forms of submarine detection, with new efforts like the Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors (PALS) program starting in 2019, which aims to use track natural and “modified” aquatic sealife near shore to use their behavior to identify the presence of encroaching submarines. Other efforts, like the Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV), which aims to field semi-autonomous submarine-hunting surface ships, that were already underway have also seen renewed interest and investment.

Northrop Grumman’s new Manta Ray system could be an incredibly potent new addition to America’s growing anti-submarine arsenal, providing a sustained weaponized presence that’s all but impossible to detect while inactive. Once submarine activity is identified via any one of the various sensing methods, automated responses in the form of both surface and subsurface platforms would take action immediately, making it harder than ever to sneak a submarine (or nuclear torpedo) in American or allied harbors.

To that end, DARPA is not placing all its eggs into Northrop Grumman’s basket: according to recent statements from DARPA, they will continue to mature other Manta Ray platforms in development.

“Manta Ray performers have each taken unique approaches to solving the wide range of challenges related to UUV endurance,” program manager Commander Kyle Woerner, said in the statement. “To me, this is a clear sign we are tackling a complex problem without a clear ‘one size fits all’ solution.”

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Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to remove a reference to the F-22 being able to carry the Mako mission internally.

Last week, Lockheed Martin unveiled Mako, the world’s first air-launched hypersonic missile designed to be carried internally by stealth fighters the F-35. This could be the single most significant development in hypersonic weapons technology since the first Russian and Chinese hypersonic weapons entered service – provided the U.S. Navy opts to put it into production.

This potentially game-changing missile was revealed at the Sea Air Space 2024 event last week, and was first reported on by NavalNews. 

Modern hypersonic missiles are defined by their ability to maneuver while traveling at sustained speeds in excess of Mach 5. This is an important distinction from other high-speed weapons, like ballistic missiles, which can travel at speeds above Mach 20, but are considered easier to intercept due to the predictability of their ballistic flight paths. 

Sandboxx News sources at Lockheed Martin confirmed that Mako is indeed a maneuvering hypersonic weapon in an e-mail on Thursday. 

“Mako does not travel in a pure arcing ballistic flight path. It is a true hypersonic weapon that operates and maneuvers in a high-altitude hypersonic regime,” Paul Sudlow from Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control told Sandboxx News. “Its high speed and maneuverability enable it to penetrate advanced air-defense systems, engaging targets at or below hypersonic speeds, depending on mission requirements,” he added.

While details about this groundbreaking new weapon remain sparse, Lockheed Martin did reveal that its new Mako missile has been under development for the past seven years, drawing funding from the U.S. Air Force while competing for a production contract in the Stand-In Attack Weapon (SiAW) program. 

That effort aimed to field an air-launched weapon meant specifically to counter elements of anti-access area denial defenses like air defense radar platforms, surface-to-air missile systems, and anti-ship missile launchers. 

The SiAW contract was ultimately awarded to Northrop Grumman in September 2023 for a missile derived from the radar-hunting AGM-88G Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile-Extended Range (AARGM-ER). Lockheed Martin’s Mako hypersonic missile that competed didn’t make the cut for the Air Force’s needs, potentially due to cost limitations, so now the firm is shopping the weapon to the U.S. Navy as a multi-mission strike asset capable of engaging both land and sea-based surface targets. 

“For the U.S. Navy, this is a multi-mission, highly capable system, highly survivable, affordable, so you’re going to hold many targets at risk with one weapons system that’s ready now,” Rick Loy, Senior Program Manager at the company’s Missile and Fire Control division told Naval News.

The Mako missile’s complicated behind-the-scenes story 

The Mako missile was developed under the auspices of the Air Force’s Stand-In Attack Weapon program, with a total of some $35 million awarded to Lockheed Martin in three seperate developmental contracts (associated with developmental phases 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3). 

In a video clip released by Lockheed Martin in March 2022 (while this weapon was competing for the SiAW contract), an F-35 is shown launching not one… but six of these Mach 5+ weapons in short order – two from internal bays and four more from external hardpoints underwing.

The Mako was initially designed for carriage aboard the F-35A, but fits just as easily into the weapons bay of the F-35C for use aboard aircraft carriers. The short take-off, vertical landing F-35B, however, doesn’t have the internal storage space required to carry the weapon while maintaining a stealth profile, but could potentially carry these missiles underwing when stealth is not a priority. 

Lockheed Martin has also explained that, while Mako is an air-launched weapon, it could easily be modified for surface, or even sub-surface applications. This would likely be done via the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System carried by U.S. Navy destroyers and cruisers (among a laundry list of other vessels around the world) similarly to Lockheed Martin’s AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile that uses an MK-114 rocket booster to propel the weapon out of the vertical launch system cells. 

Lockheed Martin partnered with Virginia-based Naval aviation systems firm Coaspire on Mako’s development. This may offer us a small bit of insight into the behind-the-scenes negotiations surrounding this missile’s intended transition from Air Force to Navy lines of accounting. There is only a single mention of the word “hypersonic” on the publicly-facing side of Coaspire’s website, which likely refers to Mako. 

Currently, the website says only, “In Hypersonics, CoAspire is working with a major defense company on a high-TRL solution.” 

High-TRL, in this context, means “High Technology-Readiness Level,” suggesting a weapon that is ready to move into realistic testing or maybe even production. This coincides with statements made by Lockheed Martin officials, who said the Mako missile is “ready to fly, ready now, and is ready to go in scale and into production quickly.”

Related: AI-piloted F-16 takes on human pilot in ‘complex dogfights’

However, CoAspire’s website was apparently updated in the past few days to remove a bit more context – seemingly in response to Mako’s reveal. Up until recently, the CoAspire website had a longer blurb about hypersonics that read as such: CoAspire “has a hypersonic missile solution accepted by the US Navy and placed in an Other Transaction Opportunity (OTA) basket – a contract vehicle, for future consideration by the service for funding.” The website went on to say that this “solution also leverages previous work by a major defense company.”

OTAs, or Other Transaction Agreements, refer to a streamlined acquisition process meant to supersede the typical Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR)-based model of contracting. OTAs allow the military to rapidly acquire critical technologies and capabilities not already being pursued through publicly funded programs of record. Usually, Other Transaction Authority procurements go through smaller, non-traditional contractors. 

The OTA “Basket” provision allows the military to take industry proposals that are deemed valuable, but don’t currently meet any formally-stated needs of the force, and are therefore not a funding priority. Programs that are approved for the “OTA Basket” can remain there for two years or more, where they can be adopted for modification by other ongoing programs; alternatively, they may see funding near the end of the fiscal year when “sweep up” funds (or leftover budget) becomes available; or may even see intentional allocation of funds in a following-year defense budget. 

Put simply, the OTA basket is where the Navy can put good ideas that aren’t currently funded on hold for a year or two, rather than stopping the effort completely and having to start again down the road when funding surfaces. 

This may provide some insight into the Mako missile’s capability set, as placing the weapon in the OTA Basket means it likely doesn’t meet the requirements necessary for the Navy’s still ongoing Hypersonic Air Launched Offensive Anti-Surface (HALO) missile program, which aims to equip the Navy’s Super Hornets with a long-distance anti-ship capability. 

This likely is not due to speed. In April of last year, Naval Air Systems Command Rear Adm. Stephen Tedford explained that, despite the HALO moniker, it’s likely that this new weapon will not actually be hypersonic. The program’s focus, he explained, is strictly on efficacy, time, and distance – but with no hard requirements for speeds above Mach 5. 

As such, it seems likely that Mako doesn’t fit the bill for HALO due to range limitations, as it’s probably more closely aligned with the shorter range requirements for the Air Force’s SiAW program, which was looking for a weapon in the 180-220 mile range. 

“Mako defeats high-value and time-sensitive targets at operationally significant ranges. Its performance meets or exceeds all Stand-in Attack Weapon requirements,” Lockheed’s Sudlow explained. 

This suggests Mako’s range is likely close to AGM-158C LRASM’s, another Lockheed Martin weapon designed for anti-ship duties that is considered the shorter-ranged precursor to the HALO effort.

Related: Dark Eagle is one of the US military’s most promising hypersonic programs 

Mako was built for the SiAW job

The Mako missile was developed with the sole purpose of engaging a wide variety of stationary and moving surface targets. In fact, the SiAW program has been characterized by some as an effort to field “one air-to-ground weapon to rule them all.” 

This effort called for the use of an advanced multi-mode guidance system boasting a combination of seekers, including what will likely be an anti-radiation (radar hunting) seeker, GPS-assisted inertial navigation, and a millimeter-wave radar seeker. 

This approach to weapon guidance will allow the SiAW to spot and hunt down targeting radar arrays, closing with their radar broadcast via the anti-radiation seeker. If the array is powered down, or even on the move, it can continue to close with it anyway, thanks to the SiAW’s onboard guidance and radar systems. 

Lockheed Martin would not offer details regarding Mako’s guidance system, but it stands to reason that it will boast very similar, if not identical, capabilities. Lockheed Martin’s Rick Loy, senior program manager at the company’s Missile and Fire Control division, did confirm that the Mako has “multiple guidance methods” and “electronic packages.” 

According to Loy, the weapon has already been physically fit tested on the F-35, and digitally tested aboard the F-22, F-16, F-15, F/A-18, and a Navy P-8 Poseidon to boot. In fact, the missile can be affixed to any aircraft with “30-inch lugs” on its weapons ejector rack – a fairly ubiquitous size across American aircraft, found among BRU-32, BRU-46/A, and BRU-47A carriage and release systems. Loy specifically cited the BRU-32, commonly found on U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets, as an example. 

According to Lockheed Martin statements, Mako started development seven years ago, placing the program onset in 2017. This coincides with the earliest known discussions about the Air Force’s intent to field the Stand-In Attack Weapon, but predates what we generally consider to be the onset of the modern “hypersonic arms race,” which began with a speech delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 1, 2018.  

Hypersonic, as an adjective, may refer to anything traveling faster than Mach 5, but hypersonic as a weapons classification has much more rigorous requirements. All ballistic missiles, from Germany’s V-2 Rocket in World War II to Russia’s Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile, achieve hypersonic speeds by flying along a fairly predictable arcing ballistic flight path. Modern hypersonic weapons, on the other hand, achieve similarly stunning speeds, but retain the ability to maneuver at those high speeds to a much larger degree than is possible with ballistic warheads. It’s this combination of speed and maneuverability that makes these weapons so difficult to intercept – not their speed alone. 

In fact, in many instances, a ballistic missile will reach its target faster than a modern hypersonic missile will – as long as the ballistic missile isn’t intercepted along its way. 

Mako’s ability to fly at hypersonic speeds while maneuvering makes this weapon unique compared to existing hypersonic weapons, which are generally categorized into one of two groups: Hypersonic Glide Vehicles and Hypersonic Cruise Missiles. Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGVs) can be seen as an extension of ballistic missile technology, though they seperate from their boosters at a lower altitude, before gliding toward their targets unpowered, but maneuver using control surfaces, chemical thrusters, or a combination of the two. 

Hypersonic cruise missiles are powered by exotic air-breathing jet engines like ramjets or scramjets, and fly along more horizontal flight paths using lift – like an aircraft – to fly and maneuver. Mako does not appear to be either, achieving hypersonic speeds through sheer brute force, and likely maneuvering via tail-mounted control surfaces, or potentially due to some degree of thrust vectoring in the rocket nozzle. 

But while that does set the Mako missile apart from existing hypersonics, what could make this weapon truly dangerous is its potential launch platform. A hypersonic missile already represents a massive challenge to intercept, but one that can be launched by stealth fighters operating practically anywhere takes an already extreme undertaking and could potentially render it all but impossible. 

Related: America’s secret stealth aircraft you’ve never heard of

What are the implications of the Mako missile if it enters service?

Hypersonic speeds are generally considered to start at around Mach 5, which (depending on altitude) is right around 3,863 miles per hour – meaning a weapon traveling just above the notional hypersonic barrier covers nearly 64 miles per minute, and greater than a jaw-dropping one mile per second. 

That means the Mako missile, assuming it flies at Mach 5 or only slightly better, could cover the breadth of its estimated operational range of 200 miles in just over three minutes. At these speeds and distances, air defense assets would already face a massive challenge in calculating trajectory and launching an interceptor capable of engaging the missile before it closes with its target. That challenge becomes all but untenable when you consider that the launch itself could come from anywhere, because these weapons can be carried internally by the world’s most advanced stealth fighter. 

Many of the details surrounding Mako’s hypersonic capabilities remain a mystery, but the truth is, how exactly this weapon compares to other hypersonic missile programs doesn’t really matter. What does matter, is what capabilities Mako could provide the U.S. Navy. 

Fielding the first or even the fastest hypersonic missile will win a nation headlines and geopolitical prestige, but fielding the right weapon for a nation’s warfare doctrine and existing platforms, will win actual wars. What ultimately matters is not how any single weapon or system performs, but rather, how that system can be used alongside other weapons and systems. 

This is why Russia’s hypersonic weapon known as Avangard is largely strategically meaningless: it’s designed to ferry nuclear warheads to American soil in the same way Russia’s existing ICBMs and SLBMs already can. In contrast, it’s also why China’s similar hypersonic weapon, the DF-ZF, represents such a threat: because it was designed to offer a new capability that complements China’s existing anti-ship arsenal. 

But while both of these weapons are fired from land-based launchers that can only be found in certain geocraphical locations (making identifying a launch a somewhat easier enterprise) that won’t be the case for the Mako. The importance of this is hard to overstate, especially if the weapon comes with the SiAW’s initial projected cost of only a few million dollars per missile. 

It is important to note, however, that this weapon is, so far, still more concept than munition. Lockheed Martin’s involvement in the SiAW effort concluded with Northrop Grumman being awarded a follow-on contract to begin building and testing real missiles, meaning Mako has not yet breached the digital barrier into the real world. So, while the design appears to be quite mature, it may not be a certainty. 

And as such, whether or not the Mako Missile makes it into service for the U.S. Navy remains to be seen. 

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The post Mako: Arming the F-35 with hypersonic missiles appeared first on Sandboxx.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Air Force revealed that its ongoing effort to field artificial intelligence (AI) pilots for combat aircraft has already seen AI-piloted F-16s take on their human counterparts in complex air-combat exercises. This effort is part of DARPA’s Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program, and is seen as an essential step toward equipping forthcoming 6th-generation fighters with AI-enabled drone wingmen.

These drills, which took place over the past 12 months, saw artificial intelligence take the stick of a heavily modified Block 30 F-16D known as the X-62 VISTA throughout a series of 21 increasingly complex operations, with rapid changes made to the coding of the AI “agent” piloting the aircraft between each bout. After logging more than 100,000 code changes to the AI’s flight-critical software over the course of the year, the AI agent was made ready to take on a human pilot in an opposing F-16 in what the Air Force described as “highly complex dogfights.”

“The potential for autonomous air-to-air combat has been imaginable for decades, but the reality has remained a distant dream up until now. In 2023, the X-62A broke one of the most significant barriers in combat aviation. This is a transformational moment, all made possible by breakthrough accomplishments of the X-62A ACE team,” said Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall.

The AI agent in control of the X-62 started by learning defensive maneuvers, before eventually moving on to offensive ones, and finally, offensive high-aspect nose-to-nose engagements against crewed fighters. During these dogfights, the AI-piloted X-62 and its human-piloted F-16 opposition reportedly closed to within just 2,000 feet of one another at speeds in excess of 1,200 miles per hour (greater than Mach 1.5), all while staying within the confines of the exercise’s safety parameters.

The X-62A, which was previously known as the NF-16D, is an experimental testbed equipped with a multi-axis thrust vectoring (MATV) engine nozzle similar to those employed by super-maneuverable Russian fighters like the Su-35. The aircraft couples this capability with a unique fly-by-wire system meant to allow the aircraft to replicate the in-flight behavior of any aircraft in service, allowing pilots inside the X-62A to feel like they’re flying anything from a C-130 to an F-22 Raptor. This unique control system made the X-62A well-suited to have an AI agent incorporated into its onboard systems, making it a logical first choice for the effort. 

According to the Air Force, the X-62 flew entirely under AI control, but did have a human “safety pilot” onboard with a switch that could disengage the AI controls in the event of an emergency, though no such event occurred at any point in the 21 flights. The Air Force is so confident in its AI pilot, in fact, that Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall is expected to go for a ride in the X-62 during just such a combat exercise held at Edwards Air Force Base in the near future.

Related: Airpower en masse: America’s new approach to warfare

Dogfighting, commonly referred to as Basic Fighter Maneuvers or BFM by pilots, may not be a common occurrence in modern military aviation, but it’s seen as an important metric of the AI’s piloting ability. Flying combat aircraft is, at its most basic levels, an exercise in complex decision-making, and few exercises force pilots to make faster decisions than a close-quarters fight against an aerobatically capable opponent.

“It’s very easy to look at the X-62A ACE program and see it as under autonomous control, it can dogfight, but that misses the point. Dogfighting was the problem to solve so we could start testing autonomous artificial intelligence systems in the air. Every lesson we’re learning applies to every task you could give to an autonomous system,” said Bill Gray, the Air Force Test Pilot School’s chief test pilot.

This effort has previously been described as one part of the broader Project Viper Experimentation and Next-Gen Operations Mode, or VENOM, which aims to install similar AI pilots in six more F-16s equipped with a full array of onboard sensors. The goal is to use these aircraft in a variety of test operations to gather useful data on manned-unmanned-teaming concepts while simultaneously helping to foster higher levels of trust between human pilots and AI “agents.” This focus on trust-building has been a significant part of both the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) efforts to incorporate AI into American airpower for years now.

“With Venom, we will take six F-16s and we’ll kit them out with an autonomous safety box, where we’ll be able to drop in autonomy code and we’ll have a human pilot experiment with it and fly with it to make sure that A – it works, and B – that it has the benefits that we expect the autonomy to deliver operationally,” Air Force’s Chief Scientist, Dr. Victoria Coleman explained last year.

Eventually, these AI agents will not only fly drones alongside crewed fighters, but also fly inside the cockpits of crewed aircraft alongside their human counterparts. This advanced automation could be seen as an incredibly capable autopilot, allowing aviators to focus on the battlespace and mission at hand, while passing off simple operations to the AI.

The U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School and DARPA were recently named finalists for the prestigious 2023 Robert J. Collier Trophy, which is an annual award given for the “greatest achievement” in American aeronautics.

Read more from Sandboxx News

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• The Royal Navy is going through difficult times

The post AI-piloted F-16 takes on human pilot in ‘complex dogfights’ appeared first on Sandboxx.