What do such precision strike missiles do when the navigation constellation they are supposed to use is not present? The AGM-88G Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile Extended Range (AARGM-ER) drills with a live-fire event by the U.S. Navy in January 2012 placed that issue squarely on the agenda, the flight mission constructed to be GPS-free in nature. The test, which was conducted on top of the Point Mugu Sea Range in California entailed the F/A-18F Super Hornet that was equipped with two live missiles, and one of them was at least fired. NAVAIR characterized the incident as a proof of the missile ability to navigate a challenging flight profile in a GPS-denied environment, and further technical detail has been other tightly guarded secrets.
The importance of that single line lies in the fact that the anti-radiation missiles occupy an awkward position between “home on what’s emitting” and “hit a fixed point on the earth.” The older suppression weapons were sensitive to speed and seeker sensitivity, but they also had one simple counter, turn off the radar and allow the missile to lose the cue. Decades later, the AGM-88 family developed, decreasing the payoff of that shutdown trick, combining passive sensing with inertial navigation and, in later models, with satellite-aided navigation to continue to propel weapons towards the last known position despite the loss of the emitter. A GPS-denied test, in that regard, is not so much a test of a single feature, as it is a test that the missile can continue to perform its job when one of the major components of its normal navigation stack is impaired, jammed, or otherwise unavailable. It can also be used to represent a broader engineering problem: ensuring correct midcourse and terminal behavior, whilst carrying uncertainty, and without providing an opponent with a survivability “off switch”
The AGM-88G is the longer-range successor of the AGM-88E AARGM, a weapon designed to broaden the kill zone of the AGM-88E AARGM and to maintain a target when operators attempt to avoid detection through hide and seek. The official specifications of the baseline AARGM focus on a combination of passive anti-radiation-sensing, inertial, satellite guidance, and millimeter-wave terminal guidance, with the capability to relay back pre-impact images through a data connection. The “ER” variant is based on that guidance heritage but alters the airframe and propulsion system to take performance to a new level, such as an air vehicle shape designed to carry internal cargo on the F-35 and a motor capable of around 2 times the range of earlier AARGM systems.
Integration work has been slow, aircraft specific and not all milestones are a missile flying off the rail. Previously, NAVAIR focused on a captive-carry flight in which an F/A-18 had an AARGM-ER separation test vehicle on board and, most notably, the exercise was the first occasion on which the missile was able to communicate with the aircraft. The framing of the time in Navy was as follows: “Data collected from this testing will support expansion of flight testing with AARGM-ER to the full performance envelope of F/A-18 Super Hornet,”, Capt. Mitch Commerford said, linking carriage and interface testing to the larger flight-test build.
Today the program can also be viewed in the other perspective: technology reuse. The Air Force-aligned Stand-in Attack Weapon (SiAW) by Northrop Grumman has been designed with AARGM-ER technology and the test program of the weapon has involved F-16 separation work as the missile approaches the fielding operational process. In open descriptions, SiAW extends the target of the mission established by classic radar suppression to include command-and-control nodes and electronic warfare installations-an expansion that follows the same pattern as modern air defense networks spread the sensing, decision-making, and jamming provided by multiple platforms and locations.
Following a previous plan of 2024, NAVAIR has already associated the most recent AARGM-ER live-fire with a roadmap to operational capability in 2026. Practically the GPS-denied focus will indicate the place that the Navy is investing test capital into: demonstrating the end-to-end behavior of the weapon will withstand the environment the assumptions upon which guided weapons have been based over the past 20 years actively hostile it is.
