FlightGlobal just posted an article on a new HARM variant with ramjet power and tail-control (no mid-body fins). These changes are intended to allow internal carriage by the new generation of US fighters.

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-- Shaken - out --

Yeah, it certainly offers a lot of promise for an unrivaled air-to-air weapon: a 10" diameter air-breathing missile would be able to outrange anything (including the retired Phoenix), and quite possibly would have a range potential beyond most fighters' radar envelopes.

 

I'm really curious about its speed capabilities...

 

But why stop at just air-launching it?

(and for that matter, why not a general-use, high-priority air-to-surface strike system?)

This basically opens up a whole new ball game: anything within the size of the 10" diameter body (app 15 feet in length?)

is game for "upgrading" with such an engine: ESSM would be my primary interest, it's range could easily double, perhaps even triple.

Throw on the seeker tech being developed for the NCADE program, and we'd have a perfect endoatmospheric supplement (surface- or air-launched) to SM-3s, without the expense of the larger missile.

 

Go a step further: renew interest in a POLAR-esque system: a VFDR-engined MLRS replacement would offer range and payload to many surface platforms that today can only be achieved with bigger missiles like the Harpoon family and Tomahawks (an air-launched version should be lighter than the >500kg Harpoon series), although land-based systems might creep into the IRBM treaty territory (even though technically not ballistic missiles, Tomahawk trailer launchers were withdrawn from Europe under START II (SALT II?) or whatever, back in the late 1980s-early 1990s timeframe)....

 

Might also make for an ideal VLS/TT-launched weapon for smaller SSKs who can't carry large numbers of Harpoon- and Tomahawk-sized munitions.

 

And not that I'd suggest we need a new nuclear strike weapon,

but just such a delivery system would be very effective, both as a tactical option on the table and for its sheer deterrent factor.

 

In any form (air launched), it would be superb for the USAF's "2018" bomber...there's a decent article (and interesting concept art) in the current edition of Combat Aircraft  magazine (Vol 9 No 2, has a Typhoon on the cover)....