For some time, the Australian newspaper's foreign editor Greg Sheridan has been the most trenchant journalistic critic of the performance of governments of both persuasions to adequately prepare this countries' defence forces for the challenges of our fraught geopolitical age. A particular concern has been the lack of two of the decisive military technologies of our time, missiles and the platforms to launch them.
As Sheridan said, on Sky News:
We don’t want these puny little army missiles that go 300km, we want long range, ground-launched tomahawk type missiles that go 2,000km ... We want lots and lots of missile trucks, be they aeroplanes or ships, which can take the missiles out 1,000km from our shore, and then fire them with another 2000km range after that.
It seems hard to argue with that, if Australia is to have a defence capability commensurate with the unprecedented threat level described in the government’s Defence Strategic Review (DSR), the public version of which was released in April.
“Missile trucks”. But where can we get them? As it happens, we may already have them, if combined with a technology that has been in development by the US Air Force and Lockheed-Martin over the last four years.
Called Rapid Dragon, it is a system that allows unmodified cargo planes like the Boeing C-17 and the Lockheed C-130 to function as launch platforms for large numbers of independently targeted long-range missiles.
Interestingly, it is named after a 10th century Chinese volley-firing siege weapon, the Ji Long Che ("rapid dragon cart"), which could simultaneously launch large numbers of long range crossbow missiles from a safe distance.
Missiles are inserted into roll-on, roll-off pallets, each of which can carry either six or nine missiles. The pallets are then loaded into the aircraft cargo bay, with the C-17 able to take up to four nine-missile pallets (36 missiles in total), and the C-130 two six-missile pallets (12 total). Australia has a fleet of eight C-17s, and eight C-130s, with twenty more on order.
Each pallet, termed a “deployment box”, can be thought of as a smart and disposable bomb bay in a box, that includes an interface allowing targeting information to be fed to the munitions from a distant fire control centre. Once air-dropped, the pallets are stabilized using parachutes, the weapons are released, the engines ignite, and the missiles proceed to their respective targets.
The system is at an advanced stage of testing, including at a NATO exercise off the coast of Norway in November last year, and a further test in the Pacific in July of this year.
According to an article in the 24 July issue of Aviation Week, General Mike Minihan, the head of the US air force Air Mobility Command, that operates its cargo fleet, stated that “he wants Rapid Dragon’s capability included in everything the command does, largely because of the dilemmas it could create for an enemy.” Minihan elaborates:
Now the adversary has an infinitely higher problem to worry about. They don’t need to worry just about the bombers, they have to worry about this C-130 and every other C-130 on the planet … All of our partners and allies fly them, so you can give the adversary an infinite number of dilemmas that they need to worry about.
Multiple other allies, including Australia, also fly the C-17. A further complication for any potential adversary is the much greater flexibility as to basing and location, and reduced infrastructure requirements compared to long-range bombers.
Initial tests of Rapid Dragon were carried out using the JASSM-ER (Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile), which has a range of 925 kilometres, with the XR version with a range of 1,900 kilometres starting deliveries in 2024. In July last year the Australian government announced it would purchase 80 JASSM-ERs and related equipment.
However the US Air Force intends to test the system with a variety of other weapons, including the Long Range Anti-Ship missile (LRASM), a derivative of the JASSM optimized for maritime attack. The Defence Review also proposed acquisition of the LRASM for use on our F35As and Super Hornets.
The US Air Force research laboratory, which has played a key role in the development of Rapid Dragon, summarizes its advantages in these three points:
- Tactically, it provides overwhelming mass.
- Operationally, it augments fighter/bombers, thus freeing up strike aircraft for other high-value missions within the Area of Responsibility.
- Strategically, it enables a strategic bombing capability for foreign partners and allies, reverses the cost imposition curve, and serves as a strong means of deterrence.
The USAF envisages complementarity between Rapid Dragon with more stealthy and survivable aircraft like the F-35 feeding targeting information.
Reportedly, the Pentagon has from the outset been promoting Rapid Dragon to allies, especially those that, like Australia, have cargo planes but lack heavy bombers, a capacity we will continue to lack due to the government’s decision to not purchase the new B21 stealth bomber.
It is a highly cost-effective option, in that it requires no modification to the cargo planes, nor significant retraining of their crews. Missile trucks on the cheap!
Moreover, as the USAF notes, it “reverses the cost imposition curve”, meaning that it costs the adversary much more to counter it than does to deploy it.
Given which, the possibility of repurposing Australia’s existing and prospective fleet of transport aircraft as launch platforms for long-range missiles capable of hitting both maritime and land targets would seem to be an option at least worth considering. Yet there is no reference to it, either in the released version of the Defence Review, or in the public discussions about it.
The main missile-related developments proposed in the Defence Strategic Review are the integration of the Long-Range Anti-Ship missile (LRASM) into the F-35A, along with the Joint Strike Missile currently under development by the Norwegian company Kongsberg in partnership with Raytheon Missiles & Defense. Additionally, the review supported the acquisition and co-development of the land based HIMARS system.
These are all significant capabilities, but the F35A has a combat radius (on internal fuel) of 1093 km, which can be extended to 1,500 km with aerial refuelling. By contrast, Rapid Dragon would provide a potent long-range missile capability against both land and maritime targets, able to stand off out of range of enemy air-defences, that could operate over the whole Indo-Pacific region. This would contribute to the protection of our distant trade routes as well as Australia’s maritime approaches.
The significance of this capability is underscored by a report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, The First Battle of the Next War: Wargaming a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan.
According to this report, which is based on twenty-four different simulations of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2026, the JASSM-ER was the decisive element in all the scenarios where Taiwan and its allies prevailed.
There was, however, one major uncertainty: the effectiveness of JASSM-ER against shipping, given that Lockheed had optimized it for attacking static land-based targets. There is a derivative of the JASSM, the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) with a different targeting system oriented to moving maritime targets, but only limited numbers of this system are currently available, though the US defence department recently issued a contract to step up production.
Moreover, according to an article about this report in Forbes magazine, the CSIS analysts were confident of their conclusions despite this limitation:
If war breaks out soon, American bombers mostly will launch JASSM-ERs. Taiwan will be counting on those missiles working against ships. The CSIS team expressed confidence. It noted a recent USN budget document discussing the merging of the software code in the LRASM and JASSM-ER. This effort could erase the targeting distinction between the two weapons and result in what budgeteers described as “a merged Navy JASSM baseline” where the JASSM is equally capable of striking targets on land or at sea.
What about the government’s recent announcement it will be ordering 200 ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, with a range of 1,500 km? Greg Sheridan has pointed out the small problem that Australia only has three surface ships capable of launching them, the Hobart-class Air Warfare Destroyers, of which typically only one is likely to be deployed at any time, and no plans to augment this fleet before the turn of the decade.
Furthermore, according to a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute:
While the government has announced the acquisition of the Tomahawk land strike missile for the Hobart, it’s highly unlikely that will result in a credible strike capability with only three AWDs in the fleet. With the Anzacs’ limited magazine depth, the Hobarts are likely to have to load most of their VLS (vertical launch) cells with air defence missiles, leaving little or no capacity for other weapons.
As Sheridan has wryly observed, this is unlikely to be sending shivers down the spines of the denizens of the Chinese Communist Party’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound.
Rapid Dragon is another matter. The Indian defence magazine Eurasian Times has a report citing an article that appeared in a recent issue of the China National Defense News, a sister publication of the PLA Daily, the mouthpiece of the CCP Central Military Commission.
The author, Xi Qizhi, makes the following points about Rapid Dragon:
- During a war “transport aircraft carry out far more sorties than bombers, and it is difficult for opponents to track them closely, so when a transport plane loaded with palletized ammunition flies to launch stealth cruise missiles outside the defence circle, it is generally challenging to be detected and discovered.”
- “It is foreseeable that once the palletized ammunition is installed on a large scale, the distribution of strike tasks by the US military will be more flexible, and the surprise of strikes will be greatly enhanced.”
- “Compared with the bombers in active service in the US military, the tray-type ammunition can make full use of the space in the carrier cabin and does not require a specific [external] pylon.”
- “It can not only bomb the same target multiple times to break through the defensive circle; it can also bomb multiple targets with multiple bombs and attack and penetrate the defense in multiple directions.”
So, Rapid Dragon might not be causing shivers at Zhongnanhai, but it has certainly gotten their attention. It is also receiving close attention from a number of Western allies, most relevantly Japan, which recently announced plans to use Rapid Dragon on its fifteen Kawasaki C-2 tactical transports.
Given all of which, it is hard to fathom the lack of Australian interest in this technology given the dire strategic circumstances we could face in a few years’ time, especially given the decision to not acquire the B21 stealth bomber, the scotching of the fourth F35A squadron, and the limited operational range of the latter aircraft.
What other options are there for Australia to make a significant contribution to countering the huge and rapidly growing Chinese naval fleet within the foreseeable future?
There is, of course, the problem of getting the stocks of long-range missiles needed to make effective use of Rapid Dragon. This is not just our problem, but one that besets the Western allies generally, including the US, which has just awarded Lockheed two huge contracts to build more JASSM and LRASM missiles.
This highlights a larger issue: the signal failure of the Western allies to gear up their defence production systems to a level commensurate with the magnitude of the strategic challenge posed by the coalition of autocracies that is now challenging the democracies at multiple locations around the world—a failure underscored by the West’s difficulty meeting the ammunition needs of Ukraine as it wages its desperate defensive war against Russian aggression.
To address this problem, some difficult trade-offs will have to be made with other priorities. Regrettable though this is, we need to contemplate what is at stake. Do we really want to consign future generations of Australians to life under the heel of a cruel, technologically empowered, totalitarian dictatorship?