According to an article published in the "Warzone" column of the US "The Drive" website on December 16, the US Air Force used a C-130 transport aircraft to successfully hit the intended target using the "Velociraptor" pallet cruise missile. This move marks the technical feasibility of the US military's "Velociraptor" plan from the theoretical stage to the level of actual combat deployment. As for such technical tests, the US Air Force has carried out twice this year, according to the US Air Force, the development of the "Velociraptor" cruise missile program is designed to deal with the Threat of China and Russia. Interestingly, the reason why the project is called "Velociraptor" is derived from the ancient Chinese weapon crossbow bed.
The Velociraptor (also known as the Rapid Dragon) air-launched pallet munitions program, led by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation, was first proposed in late 2019. The project contractors were divided into two categories, military and private, consisting of the Air Force Special Operations Command, the Air Force Defense Zone Out-of-Area Ammunition Application Center, and the U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division; the private one was composed of Lowe. Ma Corporation, Systima Technologies, Safran Electronics and Defense, and Parachute Corporation of the United States are formed by R4 Integration.
Pallet, a horizontal board used to assemble and store goods for easy loading, unloading and handling. Its minimum height can be adapted to the handling needs of pallet loaders, forklifts and other suitable loading and unloading equipment. In military use, it is usually used to load various types of military materials, such as medical supplies, weapons and ammunition, electronic equipment, etc. It has the advantages of stable stacking, safe storage and transportation, efficient mechanical operation, loading and unloading, container packaging, and fast start-up.
The US military's "Velociraptor" program expands its use on this basis, bundling various types of air surface ammunition to smart trays, so as to launch a large number of missiles or bombs in a short period of time through airdrop, which is very similar to ammunition spreaders. Like traditional airlift pallets, these ammunition pallets are ro-ro, loaded into the cargo hold of a military transport aircraft, and then projected from the tail springboard hatch using the traditional airdrop method. During free fall, the ammunition tray uses a parachute to stabilize the attitude, and then the weapon is ignited and activated, and it is successively detached from the pallet. Ground controllers use satellite communication data links to import target information through the on-board data links and make data corrections in the process, so as to achieve long-range precision strikes. The ammunition tray is a disposable product that does not need to be recycled when carrying missiles and bombs, but in the future plan of the US military, the pallet will also carry a small drone and have the ability to recycle after completing the mission. In addition, the ammunition pallet is suitable for various types of transport aircraft, such as C-130, C-17, C-5 and so on.
From Lo. The model of the pallet exhibited by the company and the actual pallet invested by the US Air Force in previous tests can be seen. The tray has a three-layer structure, each layer can carry 2 to 3 missiles, and the stack can carry up to 6 to 9 missiles. In the case of the C-130 transport aircraft, it can carry up to 2 to 3 ammunition pallets (when carrying 4 pieces) at a time, and the C-17 transport aircraft can carry 8 pieces. The C-17 transport aircraft, for example, can carry up to 32 JASSM-ER missiles at a time, while the B-IB bomber can only carry 24 and the B-52 is sharply reduced to about 20. Therefore, through the "Velociraptor" program, the US military can upgrade the transport aircraft to a level comparable to the firepower theory of B-1B bombers. In addition, from the perspective of efficiency and cost ratio, from the perspective of transport aircraft, the difficulty of transformation is not high and the cost is low, so it has the potential for large-scale application.
From the end of 2019 to 2020, the test of the US "Velociraptor" plan was all concentrated in the theoretical stage, until the beginning of 2021, the "Velociraptor" program officially developed from the theoretical stage to the direction of actual combat. In July 2021, the U.S. Air Force put in a C-17 and a C-130 transport aircraft, loaded with Veliportron ammunition pallets, for the first system-level flight test at the White Sands Range in New Mexico to assess the collective delivery effectiveness of military transport aircraft and to validate the capabilities of over-the-horizon command and control nodes. It is reported that the US Air Force used the AGM-158B "Jams" joint defense zone outer space-to-ground missile with a range of 926 kilometers in this test.
In tests on December 16, the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command used an MC-130J transport aircraft to launch a pallet of Velociraptor ammunition carrying three missiles, successfully hitting a predetermined target in the Gulf of Mexico. It is worth mentioning that the US Air Force Special Operations Command did not mention in the press release what kind of target it was; However, the company issued a statement saying that the target was a ship, which implied that the US military had invested an AGM-158C long-range anti-ship missile with a range of 560 kilometers in the test. It can be seen that the "Velociraptor" ammunition pallet program has achieved the ability to carry multiple types of missiles against land and sea targets.
From the perspective of the US Air Force's own combat needs, through the "Velociraptor" ammunition pallet plan, the transport aircraft into a bomber or arsenal aircraft in wartime is indeed a good way to expand the range and density of firepower. However, in the eyes of opponents, it is believed that even if this plan expands the multi-purpose capabilities of transport aircraft and makes the means of strike more diversified, it has reduced the overall transportation capacity of the US military itself to a certain extent; in addition, the AGM-158 series of missiles, despite their advanced performance, but the high price, makes it extremely low in large-scale attrition operations.
In terms of its operational objectives, the "Velociraptor" ammunition pallet program still poses a certain threat to China and Russia. The first is the use of non-traditional combat platforms, which are used to throw large-scale confrontation/offensive weapons and can play an unexpected role in future conflicts. The second is to carry weapons that are not ordinary aerial bombs, but precision strike weapons outside the joint defense zone. Compared with the former, the latter has a longer range, higher accuracy, stronger damage effect, and can better change the transport aircraft with weak self-defense capabilities, using the previous combat method of ground bombing. Thus, the transport aircraft in the airspace far from the target, only need to be quickly thrown, you can turn back and withdraw, its survival chances are guaranteed to a certain extent.
In response to the US military's "Velociraptor" plan, there are rumors that air superiority fighters, early warning aircraft, and ground air defense/anti-missile systems can be used to coordinate and intercept them. In terms of combat effectiveness, this traditional method of combat is time-consuming and laborious, and the overall effect is not dominant. The first is that the early warning aircraft must undertake the task of lift-off and early warning in a sustained manner around the clock, and the air superiority fighter must be on standby at any time, and it must take into account any direction, rather than the traditional direction of attack. In this combat readiness situation, the efficiency of air interception is still not optimistic, and the STEALTH performance of the JASSM carried by the US military is not considered; the use of various interference means, such as the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to carry out electronic interference, ammunition trays loaded with decoy bombs, etc., will greatly affect the overall effect of air interception.
The effect of air interception is still so, the use of ground air defense / anti-missile systems can also be imagined, in addition, for all kinds of high-value / time-sensitive targets, it is necessary to invest in a certain scale of air defense / anti-missile systems, rather than a few sets of simple. The real solution lies in the fact that in addition to investing in fixed-wing early warning aircraft, it is also necessary to use low-altitude long-time unmanned aerial vehicles to continuously undertake airborne early warning tasks, so as to create an airborne early warning network system with a long stay in the air and taking into account multiple directions. But this is just a defensive measure.
Offense is the best defense, and only by developing a similar weapon system can our country guarantee that when a conflict breaks out and after an attack, it can make up for its weaknesses and re-establish its superiority through retaliatory actions. And such as the U.S.-made C-130 and C-17 medium and large transport aircraft collocation, China can use the Y-9 and Y-20 model combination to cope, from a technical point of view, the development of such means of attack is not untouchable, the real problem is whether the existing Y-9 and Y-20 production can meet this operational needs.