The US Air Force has a new weapon that could smash Putin’s army

Unfortunately it would be much less useful against China

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The US Air Force has taken delivery of the first copy of a new missile that arms-maker Northrop Grumman designed for a critical mission: rolling back enemy air defences to clear the way for follow-on aerial bombardment. It’s a vital capability that could tip the scale in any future European war.
But the new Stand-in Attack Weapon, or SiAW, has a problem – and it’s in the name. The SiAW is meant for relatively close attacks. But in, say, a war with China over Taiwan, Air Force fighters could struggle to get close.
Northrop Grumman handed over the first SiAW in mid-November, a little more than a year after the Air Force awarded the Virginia-based firm the contract for the speedy weapon. “The company is continuing to develop the weapon, conduct platform integration and complete the flight test program for rapid prototyping and fielding by 2026,” Northrop Grumman stated.
The 14-foot SiAW is an air-to-ground missile that “will provide strike capability to defeat rapidly relocatable targets,” according to the manufacturer. It borrows much of its design from Northrop Grumman’s Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile, which is optimised for suppressing or destroying enemy air-defence radars. The latest extended-range version of the AARGM reportedly travels as far as 150 miles at a top speed exceeding Mach two.
The big differences between the AARGM and the SiAW are their seekers and warheads. The AARGM is fitted with a seeker designed to home in on the transmissions from enemy radars and a fragmenting warhead – ideal for knocking out flimsy radars and surface-to-air missile launchers. The SiAW should boast an array of seekers and a different warhead lending it the ability to home in on vehicles, command posts and other targets that might be more heavily protected – and less noticeable on the electromagnetic spectrum – than a typical air-defence radar is.
Both the AARGM and the SiAW are sized to fit two apiece inside the internal weapons bays of the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter.
The concept behind the SiAW is sound. Flying without external weapons for maximum stealth, F-35s would penetrate the outermost layer of enemy defences. While accompanying F-35s and other aircraft fire AARGMs at the enemy’s radars, the SiAW-armed F-35s would target the heavier parts of the defensive network – the vehicles, buildings and bunkers that might shrug off an AARGM’s shrapnel or which don’t offer radar transmissions to home on.
The problem with the SiAW and a host of other new American munitions is range. 
To be clear. It’s not the range of the weapon that’s the main problem. After decades of breakneck modernisation, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has replaced many of its once-obsolescent air defences with hundreds of newer launchers firing missiles as far as 125 miles. F-35s flinging AARGMs and SiAWs could pick off these launchers while staying beyond the reach of the launchers’ missiles. 
No, the problem is the range of the F-35 itself: 590 miles with internal weapons and fuel. There’s just one big US air base that’s close enough to Taiwan to send F-35s into combat over and around the island without the fighters having to refuel in mid-air from big, slow, vulnerable tanker planes.
But that air base, Kadena, is extremely vulnerable to Chinese attack. The PLA Rocket Force possesses hundreds of missiles with enough range to strike Kadena from launch sites on the Chinese mainland. “Even a relatively small number of accurate missiles could shut the base to flight operations for critical days at the outset of hostilities,” reported RAND, a California think-tank.
What good are a bunch of high-tech F-35s armed with high-tech SiAW missiles if the F-35s can’t get close enough to Chinese forces to fire the missiles? 
The F-35-SiAW combination could however be a devastating one in an aerial campaign over Europe, where the distances between friendly and enemy forces are much less daunting. F-35s flying against Russian forces could sweep away their air defences, opening up the skies for Western jets to operate above the battlefield. We know what happens then: it’s happened to three different Soviet-equipped tank armies in living memory. The Iraqi army was destroyed twice and the Libyan army once with very few losses among US and allied ground troops. Putin’s soldiers wouldn’t fare any better.
But over the vast reaches of the western Pacific region, the F-35 is all but ineffective with existing munitions. It’s not for no reason the Air Force is doubling down on new stealth bombers and armed drones. Those aircraft can reach where the F-35 can’t.
If there’s a weapon that will make the F-35 more relevant in a war with China over Taiwan, it might not be the SiAW. Instead, it could be the new Kongsberg Joint Strike Missile, a stubby cruise missile that fits inside the F-35’s weapons bays and still packs enough fuel to range 350 miles. 
The Air Force has already paid for its first batch of the JSMs from the Norwegian manufacturer. The first missiles should arrive in 2026 – perhaps just in time for a Pacific fight against the Chinese.
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