As far as the vertical-launch shot to engage a JAGM on a drone intercept trajectory is concerned, it is more related to the turnaround in engineering from designing a missile to be launched from forward-facing air-to-ground launch rails to designing it to have a smaller footprint to act as a spherical defense effector to be launched from trucks, decks, and remote locations, he added.
JAGM, or AGM-179, was a replacement track for legacy weapons that has, as its key feature, a two-way seeker that provides simultaneously both semi-active laser guidance and millimeter wave radar guidance, for situations that lack good visibility and good EM conditions. As regards the employment against UASs, this implies that there are two ways of engaging a target, one using autonomous radar guidance when there is poor visibility, or using laser energy designation when a sensor operator or aircraft designates a point on a UAS. The point that is significant, rather than the emergence of a new application for JAGM as an air defense weapon, is that all the components necessary for engaging small airborne targets have already been integrated into the guidance system of this weapon.
What was different in the China Lake series of launches was the geometry of the launches. A quad-pack launcher has a genuine “up-and-over” trajectory of 90 degrees, and this is what the Navy likes for its missiles. It means shooting straight up and then turning toward the desired direction. This can be useful if the platform can’t turn toward the target or if there are threats from multiple directions at low altitudes.
A cruel corollary of vertical launch is what to do with the rocket exhaust so it doesn’t eat away at the top of the ship or other equipment. The answer, according to Lockheed, is what they call their shielding and directing of the exhaust, and what they refer to as a “gas management system,” which kicks back energy from sensitive ship structure during the early impulse stage of boost. It is this kind of unsung engineering subtlety that will determine whether or not “modular launchers” is more than mere marketing hype.
The bigger picture is that the response against drones has seen a paradigm shift from a niche base defense kit to a force design issue. The Department of Defense has tasked the Army as the executive agent for Counter-Small UAS in 2019, and since then, the approach has been on the “layered approach,” which includes a combination of sensors, electronic effects, guns, and interceptors. On the other hand, the Marine Corps has looked at the JAGM more as an operational system to be enhanced rather than an item to place in inventory.
Based on the 2025 Marine Aviation Plan, there are funded plans to add counter-UAS software and an electromagnetic control actuator section (EMCAS) to enhance air-to-air guidance response and logic against unmanned aircraft. This corresponds well to the China Lake plan to enhance the baseline ground attack capability by adjusting the digital portion to have enhanced seeker and control logic response in the world of unmanned aircraft. The vertical launch JAGM project, in essence, is a small-scale case history in reuse using an existing seeker, an existing missile body, and a new launcher and exhaust system to provide a mobile, all-azimuth capability to fill a slot in a netted cueing system. The project does not displace jammers, guns, and higher-level missiles but simply presents a new type of hard-kill capability where available space, time, and geometry of engagement are of prime importance.
