It’s taken about five years, but DARPA’s missile-launching missile has become the government’s latest experimental X-plane and is advancing toward flight testing.
Calling it a missile-carrying missile may have a nice ring to it, but the X-68A “LongShot” isn’t strictly a missile itself. LongShot is actually a full-fledged unmanned aircraft that’s air-launched like a missile from larger human-piloted aircraft with the goal of eliminating airborne threats without putting human pilots at risk.
“LongShot burns down significant technical risk and presents a viable path for the military services to increase air combat reach and effectiveness from uninhabited, air-launched platforms,” program manager Colonel John Casey said in DARPA’s update on the state of the program. “We’ve completed critical milestones necessary for the integrated flight test campaign, which will validate vehicle performance and lay the foundation for efficient follow-on development.”
Given that this is a highly experimental DARPA program, details about those critical milestones are scarce, with the Defense Department’s research arm only saying that the craft recently completed full-scale wind tunnel tests and successful trials of its parachute recovery and weapon-release systems. Colonel Casey provided some additional details to The Register in an email, noting that the LongShot team has been “diligently working” on maturing systems since the program began.
“We have made significant progress in the detailed design of a complex flight vehicle and actuation mechanisms to go from a captive store to a flying vehicle,” Casey told us. “Further, we have made steady progress on the airworthiness and safe separation artifacts to build towards flight testing.”
DARPA wants LongShot to be aircraft-agnostic so that it can be integrated into fighters, bombers, or palletized for launch from larger support aircraft. For its upcoming flight tests, which DARPA said it wants to conduct “as early as the end of 2026,” the X-68A LongShot will be deployed from an F-15.
LongShot began under DARPA in 2021 with Phase I design contracts awarded to General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. Following a successful Preliminary Design Review in February 2022, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) was selected to continue into Phase 2 in March 2022. Back then GA-ASI said it intended to conduct flight tests of the LongShot by 2024, which clearly hasn’t happened yet.
DARPA noted in 2021 that LongShot was being designed to be capable of controlled flight, and we’re told the current iteration of the system is autonomous.
“For the DARPA demonstration system, the X-68A flies autonomously executing mission plans and maneuvers that it is commanded to execute,” Casey explained in his email. In terms of payload, Casey explained that DARPA wants LongShot to integrate “at least two existing air-to-air weapons,” giving it multiple opportunities to engage hostile aircraft.
Given that it’s still experimental, it’s not definite that the X-68A will ever make it past the trial phase, and if it does, Casey did not share when the Department of Defense could feasibly begin to field the aircraft.
“As an experimental flight test demonstrator, the X-68A is intended to prove the flight controls and mechanisms function as designed,” Casey explained. “Follow-on development would be necessary to expand the concept from an X-plane to a combat capability.” ®