Worried about being shot down by PL-15, the US Air Force is accelerating the development of new long-range missiles to maintain air superiority

The range of current Air Force weapons forces pilots of stealth aircraft to get too close to their targets, risking being detected and shot down, Air Force Command Commander General Mark D. Kelly said on September 22, 2021. He said the service must be equipped with "fifth-generation weapons" with longer range to match its fifth-generation fighters.

Stealth aircraft are not completely invisible, but their detection distance is short, so by the time the other side detects them, it is often too late. This is the so-called "they are only discovered when they are right in front of them."

"We get a lot of punch (from) our low-observable capabilities because we push them out to the range where everybody (even stealth aircraft) can be observed," Kelly told reporters during a press roundtable at the Air Force Association's Air, Space and Cyber ​​conference. That means "we're not getting a very good return on our investment" on fifth-generation or better fighters. Fifth-generation weapons "give us greater range, whether it's new air-to-air or air-to-ground," he said. The Air Force considers its F-22, F-35 and B-2 bomber to be "fifth-generation" systems.

“If it goes fast, I’m happy because any time we pull the trigger ... we have to assume the target is going to move in the time between (the weapon) leaving the launcher and it showing up on the target,” he said. “And hypersonic speeds and shorter ranges shorten that time.”

This is a confusing statement, but in fact it is to use the advantage of stealth, launch missiles at close range, and the missiles fly at a high speed, thereby compressing the enemy's reaction time.

But, "it's not exactly hypersonics. We just have to make sure we can reach them at ranges that equal or exceed their ability to reach us."

The longest-range air-to-air missile in the Air Force's inventory is the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, a weapon Kelly noted dates back 25 years.

“To be fair, the AIM-120 we have today is a vast improvement,” he acknowledged, “but we’ve done the best we can with that capability.”

The latest model is AIM-120D, which has very good performance and is a first-class medium-range air-to-air missile.

The Chinese Air Force has already fielded an AMRAAM-like weapon, the PL-15, which has a much longer range than the AMRAAM, negating much of the Air Force’s so-called “first sight, first shot” advantage. This has prompted the Air Force to pursue the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, a new air-to-air missile.

The Americans are quite wary of the combination of the J-20 and the PL-15. Although the PL-15 can be used on other PLA aircraft, it was originally tailored for the J-20. Using it on other aircraft is "backward compatible"

The Americans believe that the PL-15 has a range of more than 100 miles (about 160.9344 kilometers), which makes the PL-15 a threat not only to the latest F-35 fighter jets of the US military, but also to the bombers, aerial refueling tankers and early warning agencies of the US air strike group. Therefore, the development of a new long-range air-to-air missile is an issue that the US Air Force attaches great importance to.

The AIM-260 "gets us there" in terms of range, Kelly said.

Kelly said the Air Force needs to take an "enterprise-wide approach" to its weapons. Failure to do so is "the greatest risk facing the fighter force."

“When we field any capability, it has to be an enterprise-wide solution,” Kelly explained. “So … if you field fifth-generation assets — fighters, bombers, ISR, whatever — and you don’t have fifth-generation sustainment, you don’t have fifth-generation aerial target capability, you don’t have fifth-generation weapons, that limits the capability of that weapon system. That’s just the way it is.”

The fifth-generation aircraft is not just an aircraft, it has a whole support system behind it. The picture shows a target aircraft simulating a fifth-generation aircraft.

However, Kelly said the AIM-260 is not the ultimate solution for air superiority.

AIM-120D and AIM-260 (below) comparison. The basic size is not much different from the 120, and it is a routine of shrinking the wings and increasing the diameter of the bomb, after all, it needs to be placed in the bomb bay of the F-22 and F-35. The US Air Force estimates that the AIM-260 will reach initial operational capability in 2022.

“We cannot take our eyes off follow-on capabilities,” he insisted. “Our adversaries do not develop and design weapons in sequence.” Kelly said that while China was developing a near-term weapon, work on “multiple lines” of potential successors was already well underway.

The Americans have determined that there is a dual-pulse rocket engine missile in the PLA Air Force weapons research, which may be the legendary PL-21

“We can’t just go about solving problem A and not even worry about problem B,” he said. “We have to keep looking forward.”