Air Force To Turn Navy Air Defense Busting Missile Into High-Speed Critical Strike Weapon
The new missile will give the service's F-35As a key tool to rapidly destroy air defenses, ballistic and cruise missile launchers, and other threats.
By Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway March 18, 2019
The U.S. Air Force has revealed that it is working to turn the U.S. Navy’ s Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile-Extended Range, or AARGM-ER, into a fast-flying strike weapon that its F-35A Joint Strike Fighters will be able to use against a variety of time-sensitive targets. This is something that The War Zone had thought would be the case based on previous information about this program. The new missile would give those stealthy jets, as well as other aircraft in the future, an important tool for quickly knocking down anti-access and area denial threats, as well as destroying pop-up targets on short notice.
What appears to be the first public announcement that the AARGM-ER would serve as the basis for what the Air Force officially refers to as the Stand In Attack Weapon, or SiAW, was included in detailed documents about the service’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2020, which it released on Mar. 18, 2019. Mention of the SiAW had first appeared in the Air Force’s budget request for the 2018 fiscal cycle, which came out in February 2017, but the line items made no mention of using a particular missile as the starting point.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27022/air-force-to-turn-navy-air-defense-busting-missile-into-high-speed-critical-strike-weapon
