By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization
The US Air Force is arming its entire fleet of F-35s with the cutting edge Stormbreaker bomb capable of tracking and destroying moving targets in all kinds of weather conditions from ranges as far as 40-nautical miles.
In development for years, the now operational Stormbreaker arms the F-15E and F/A-18 and is currently testing on all three variants of F-35s. Beginning as the Small Diameter Bomb II, the Stormbreaker has been a pioneering and ground-breaking, air-launched weapon engineered with a “tri-mode” seeker enabling it to track targets with infrared, laser and millimeter wave technology. The weapon is also one of the early iterations of how two-way data links can be engineered into an air dropped weapon to better enable in-flight course correction and an ability to hit moving targets.
For these reasons, Stormbreaker is described by Raytheon engineers as a “network-enabled weapon that can engage moving targets in all weather conditions using its multi-effects warhead and tri-mode seeker.” This kind of progress with Stormbreaker is part of why the Air Force just awarded Raytheon with a deal to build as many as 1,500 of the bombs. The arrival of the weapon in greater numbers follows a year of 28 successful test drops in 2023 and the expansion of the Stormbreaker across the Pentagon’s fleet of attack aircraft.
The Stormbreaker is engineered with warhead and explosive versatility as well, as it can leverage shape-charge jets and better fragmentation technologies to both penetrate tanks and improve lethality. The weapon can also use various kinds of “fusing” technologies such as a delayed fuse enabling the bomb to penetrate a target before detonating to maximize explosive effect.
A weapon such as the Stormbreaker introduces a handful of new tactical advantages to include the ability to use all-weather millimeter wave sensing to track moving targets in an obscured weather environment such as rain, cloud, sand or fog. This is particularly relevant in scenarios where GPS might be jammed, compromised or rendered ineffective by enemy attacks. The weapon can also be placed in a relevant way along the broader US Air Force trajectory of weapons modernization and innovation.
As a “network”-enabled weapon with a two-way data link similar in some respects to the US Navy’s Block IV Tomahawk cruise missile, the Stormbreaker can receive new or updated targeting specifics while “in-flight” to adjust to changing targets. This kind of breakthrough, which exists on both the Tomahawk and Stormbreaker, can be seen as a critical step along the way to “collaborative” bomb attack technology now emerging with the US Air Force. Through a program known as Golden Horde, the Air Force is making breakthrough progress “networking” bombs to one-another in flight to coordinate attack details, adjust to changing targets and essentially “share” time-sensitive combat information in real time autonomously between two or more bombs. These breakthroughs, which are showing promise in tests with the Air Force Research Laboratory, are also beginning to leverage cutting edge applications of AI able to gather and analyze incoming sensor data at the point of collection, while also networking with a host platform. This kind of “collaborative bombing” could be seen as a new “next” incremental step in network enabled warfare demonstrating the maturation of critical bomb networking technologies built into the Stormbreaker.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization and the Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
