Low-cost smart munitions and cruise missiles, is this the future of combat?

An Anduril Barracuda cruise missile flies towards a target. (Image credit: Anduril Industries)

The prolonged conflicts in Ukraine and West Asia have demonstrated the importance of both precision weapons and more importantly the ability to deploy them at scale. Precision firepower is supplanting the massed firepower of yesteryears.

Today's shock and awe is not the 1,000 bomber air raids of World War-II, but the quick surgical strikes that dismantle the ability of the opposition to gather a coherent response. India demonstrated this by getting Pakistan to sue for peace after missiles struck critical air bases and radar sites. One key problem with the use of this approach is the costs associated with the use of these missiles.In a prolonged high intensity conflict, the use of such missiles could be prohibitively expensive.

The Russians have been struggling with this problem, as they are well over the four-year mark of the conflict in Ukraine. The Russians, with a well established and well oiled defence industrial complex, had to evolve to produce cheaper precision weapons, such as a glide bomb kit, that could give a dumb bomb the ability to accurately strike a target deep inside Ukrainian territory.

India too is developing less expensive substitutes for key weapons.

The country is also developing weapons such as the Tara, Gaurav and Gautam glide bombs to bring pin-point accuracy to bombs, thus reducing the necessity to use high end precision weapons. Even weapons such as the long range version of the Pinaka and the upcoming Long Range Land Attack Cruise Missile (LR-LACM) can be substituted for the more expensive Brahmos.The US Air Force is pursuing an ambitious plan to acquire nearly 28,000 low-cost cruise missiles over the next five years under the Family of Affordable Mass Missiles (FAMM) program.

This initiative reflects a shift in strike doctrine, prioritizing affordability, scalability, and rapid production to meet the demands of potential high-intensity conflicts. The program includes three variants: FAMM-L (launched directly from aircraft hardpoints), the FAMM-P, (deployed from cargo aircraft using palletized systems) and FAMM-BAR, designed for extended-range strikes.

The US Air Force expects thousands of strikes in the opening phase in a conflict with a near-peer adversary.The conflicts in both Ukraine and West Asia have demonstrated the need for such weapons. In the era of non-combat kinetic operations, a military would depend on such long-range precision munitions from the outset. Just as the mass use of drones has let a re-think on a more effective use of air defence, precision strikes in an elongated conflict necessitates such weapons. The Indian armed forces have built a stockpile of conventional munitions for 45 days of fighting, but a rethink is required for modern munitions for such an extended period of time.