Rapid Dragon (missile system)

The project name is derived from a tenth century Chinese volley-firing siege weapon, known as the Ji Long Che ( "rapid dragon cart"), which could simultaneously launch large numbers of long range crossbow missiles from a safe distance. In addition to enhancing USAF capabilities, the Rapid Dragon concept enables other air forces without strategic bombers but which do operate transport aircraft to mass fire JASSMs. Developed from 2020 to 2021 by a team of US Air Force development groups and industry partners, Rapid Dragon has all of its capabilities self-contained on its disposable drop pallet; allowing a standard military cargo plane to be used at any time as a standoff strategic bomber before reverting back to regular transport missions. For example, a C-130 could launch 12 JASSM cruise missiles from a safe distance of from target with the use of two Rapid Dragon pallets. The larger C-17 could accommodate 5 Rapid Dragon pallets, each carrying 9 missiles for a mission, with a total payload of 45 missiles with warheads. In a test over the Gulf of Mexico on December 16, 2021, an armed Rapid Dragon received target data from a distant command and control node in flight, used the data to target its armed JASSM, was airdropped from the aircraft, and successfully deployed its payloads with the live missile destroying its naval target. The other 3 bays of the 4-pack palette had ballast rounds with the same shape and weight in order to test the system's method of preventing missile releases from conflicting with each other. To maintain consistent stability during drops, these non-munition ballast rounds will continue to be used for missions requiring fewer missiles than the module's full capacity. The cargo plane, an MC-130J, was flown by an Air Force Special Operations Command operational flight crew and carried a 4-pack version of the Rapid Dragon missile module. The airdrop crew treated the load as a standard supply drop with the pallet's Rapid Dragon's control unit autonomously receiving command and control data to be used for programming the JASSM's targeting data. Based on prior conflicts, it is known that even modern air defense systems struggle with defending against cruise missile barrages as seen with the 2018 Riyadh missile strike during the Saudi Arabian–led intervention in Yemen as well as the 2018 missile strikes against Syria during the American-led intervention in the Syrian civil war. Due to the vulnerability of sophisticated air defense systems such as S-300 and S-400 to mass attacks from low flying cruise missiles, it is thought that Rapid Dragon is well suited for swarm tactics missions to suppress enemy air defenses with large numbers of JASSM-ER optionally accompanied by swarms of miniature spoofing decoy drones released from a second airdrop module. The US Air Force intends to continue live tests with C-17s, AGM-158C Long Range Anti Ship (LRASM), and range AGM-158D JASSM-XR which became available in low production numbers in 2021. The Air Force's Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation (SDPE) group is also researching integration of Boeing's lower cost but shorter range () JDAM-ER bombs, and is working with Raytheon to support Rapid Dragon launch of ADM-160 MALD decoys. In November 2022, the first European-theater, live-fire demonstration of a Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile was performed with a MC-130J at Andøya Space test range in Norway with support from Polish, Norwegian, Romanian, and British military partners for the Atreus 2022 military exercise. Some of the cruise missiles compatible with Rapid Dragon can carry nuclear warheads. This could change how the terms of arms limitation treaties will need to be written or re-written. Stipulations based on the number of launch vehicles would no longer be effective if any cargo aircraft with a suitable bay could be converted into one. ==Historical context==

• Airdrops of supplies have been commonplace since World War II; however, Rapid Dragon differs from modern palletized airdrops in that the parachute is rigged to ensure the missile cargo is oriented nose-down. As each missile is released in series, it falls out of its barrel-like cell, unfolds its wings alongside its tail, ignites the engine to generate thrust, and performs a pull-up maneuver before proceeding to its target. Due to the extended range of its missiles, Rapid Dragon allows use of cargo planes as arsenal ships facing much more heavily contested target airspaces with the aircraft staying safely outside the kill ranges of hostile air defenses. Likewise, the theoretical capability of using cargo planes to launch missiles has been around since the 1970s. In 1974, the US demonstrated the feasibility of launching an ICBM from practically anywhere when it test fired a , LGM-30 Minuteman airdropped from a C-5A Galaxy. Likewise, the US military continues to use similar techniques for launching simulated ballistic missiles from C-17s for air defense system tests. • In the 1980s when the B-1 bomber faced the possibility of cancelation, a lower cost alternative to the B-1 bomber known as the Cruise Missile Carrier Aircraft (CMCA) was designed. It consisted of reconfiguring Boeing 747-200 cargo airframes as special-purpose cruise missile launchers with a capacity of 50 to 100 AGM-86 ALCM missiles. Like the Rapid Dragon, missiles were released rapidly from the rear of the aircraft (in this case, via a rotary launcher ejecting missiles out the side of the tail fuselage) and were dynamically targeted by an onboard control system. While the CMCA was never fully developed with the revival of the B-1B bomber, Rapid Dragon leverages the CMCA's thematic concepts of adapting existing aircraft to become standoff arsenal ships in support of cost-cutting purposes. By adapting the concept to a "roll on, roll off" capability, Rapid Dragon can be rapidly used to convert virtually any of the numerous cargo aircraft capable of airdropping pallets from a rear ramp that are operated by the US and its allies into a standoff strike bomber. Later in the 2010s, with the emergence of near-peer adversaries exploring anti-access area denial tactics to counter the United States military's aerial and naval power projection capabilities, other research institutions such as the RAND Corporation began exploring concepts that may extend standoff bombing capabilities for the US military while balancing Congressional budgetary restraints. Similar concepts for parachuting pallets from cargo aircraft to launch rockets have independently been proposed in the civilian aerospace sector by a cross-industrial team sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in 2011 at the 25th AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites to facilitate the deployment of satellites weighing 100-200 kilograms to Low Earth orbit without the need for a dedicated spaceport. Follow-up design research was published in 2013 and 2015 at the 27th and 29th AIAA/USU Conferences on Small Satellites respectively. These design proposals have also been preceded and paralleled with other related Air-launch-to-orbit concepts that launch spacecraft deployed either from cargo ramps or external mounts. • Rapid Dragon adds standoff range and modularity to prior offensive airdrop approaches. This enables vulnerable but large-capacity cargo planes to be used at much greater distances from the target; allowing for the greater flexibility and lower cost of temporarily repurposing unmodified cargo planes as standoff cruise missile bombers. Current research efforts include enhancing Rapid Dragon to support missions such as precision aerial mine laying alongside mass drone dispersal. ==References==