US bulking up missile stocks for a Taiwan war

The US aims to massively upscale missile production for a possible Taiwan Strait conflict against China, a weaponry build-up that could quickly stall due to institutional obstacles, industrial challenges and a potential shortage of critical materials.

This month, The War Zone reported that the US Air Force (USAF) is advancing with its Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) project, which aims to develop low-cost, high-production cruise missiles for potential high-end conflicts including against China in the Pacific.

The War Zone mentions that four companies – Anduril Industries, Integrated Solutions for Systems, Inc, Leidos subsidiary Dynetics and Zone 5 Technologies – have been selected to design, build and flight test new missile concepts within seven months.

The report says that the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), in cooperation with the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Armament Directorate (AFLCMC/EB), announced the collaboration, which also involves US Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), and US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM).

The War Zone notes that the ETV project aims to prototype commercial and dual-use technology solutions that demonstrate modularity for subsystem upgrades and serve as a foundation for affordable high-rate production.

The missiles are expected to be capable of mass deployment through multiple launch methods, creating a strategic challenge for adversaries.

The project intends to use commercial off-the-shelf components and modern manufacturing approaches to create economic munition stockpiles for prolonged conflicts. If successful, the project could significantly enhance the USAF’s strategic capabilities while reducing costs.

The War Zone report states that the designs aim for a range of approximately 500 nautical miles, high subsonic speed and a cost goal of US$150,000 per unit in bulk orders, significantly lower than the current AGM-158B Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (JASSM-ER) priced between $1.2-$1.5 million per unit.

The ETV project comes on the heels of a massive US spending spree to boost missile stocks. In March 2023, Task and Purpose reported that the Pentagon had allotted $30.6 billion out of its $842 billion budget for 2024 to enhance its tactical missile and munitions arsenal.

Task and Purpose notes that while the US Navy and Air Force plan to procure more Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASMs), missile stocks may not be sufficient for a possible conflict over the Taiwan Strait in 2027, necessitating easy-to-manufacture, low-cost alternatives.

The ongoing Ukraine war has shown the prodigious demand for precision-guided munitions in massive, industrialized wars, making low-cost solutions all the more imperative.

Christopher Miller notes in the Financial Times that Russia’s use of Soviet-era gravity bombs retrofitted with cheap pop-up wings and satellite guidance has proved devastating against Ukraine’s forces.

Such vintage weapons include the 1,500-kilogram FAB-1500 from World War II, the 500-kilogram FAB-500, first produced in the 1950s, and the much larger FAB-3000, a 3,000-kilogram bomb from the same period.

Miller says these guidance kits allow the bombs to be air-launched outside the range of Ukrainian air defenses and that they are much cheaper for Russia to use instead of firing hundreds of artillery rounds at a target, as one bomb can demolish multiple buildings.

Russia’s extensive Soviet-era stockpiles of gravity bombs have enabled it to keep up a high tempo of air strikes against Ukrainian forces. Miller says that in the third week of March, Russia launched over 700 guided bombs. At the time of his writing, Russia has launched 3,500 guided bombs this year, a 16-fold increase over 2023.

Miller notes that mass guided bomb strikes were instrumental in Russia’s bloody capture of Avdiivka in mid-February and that in March mass cruise and ballistic missile strikes against Ukraine’s energy facilities and infrastructure plunged Kharkov into darkness and threatened the destruction of hydroelectric facilities in Kaniv and Zaporizhzhia.

Taking cues from Russia’s prodigious expenditure of precision-guided munitions made of refurbished vintage bombs, the US may run dry of high-tech munitions in the opening days of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

In a January 2023 CSIS article, Seth Jones notes that CSIS war games conducted in January 2023 showed that the US may run out of precision-guided munitions in less than a week in a Taiwan Strait conflict.

Jones mentions that in two dozen versions of a CSIS war game simulating a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, the US expended 5,000 long-range missiles in three weeks of conflict, expending its entire inventory of LRASMs in just the first week.

Jones notes that China has been acquiring high-end weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than the US, noting that the Ukraine war has exposed significant deficiencies in America’s ability to produce sufficient arms.

He also mentions several challenges in upscaling the US defense industrial base, such as inconsistent and unpredictable orders from the US Department of Defense (DOD) that hinder economies of scale, supply chain constraints such as limited manufacturers for critical components, China’s dominance of rare earth metal supplies and nitrocellulose for explosives, long lead replacement times for spent munitions and bureaucratic delays in foreign military sales (FMS) programs.

While the ETV project can help the US sustain critical munitions stocks through low-cost design and manufacturing, it is unclear if the US has sufficient stocks of raw materials to ramp up missile production.

In a February 2024 Defense One article, Joe Buccino notes that the US must rehabilitate its obscure National Defense Stockpile and focus on critical munitions.

Buccino notes that the National Defense Stockpile, which operates across the US, holds an emergency supply of critical metals such as aluminum, titanium, magnesium, and electric steel, saying that rehabilitation efforts should focus on these.

However, Buccino points out that while the US government recognizes 50 materials as critical, the current National Defense Stockpile is held at just six full or nearly full depots, which is paltry compared to Cold War levels when the US had 102 depots and 92 critical materials.

In addition to critical materials, Buccino says a critical munitions reserve within the National Defense Stockpile would restore munitions stocks for air dominance, interdiction operations, air and missile defense and destroying hardened or buried structures. Such munitions, Buccino says, include the LRASM, JASSM-ER, Precision Strike Missiles (PSMs) and 155-millimeter artillery rounds.

Despite this, Buccino suggests that the US PROCURE Act could help restock the National Defense Stockpile by establishing an annual revolving fund of $500 million within the Treasury Department for the Pentagon to purchase essential munitions.

That, he says, would allow the DOD to swiftly replenish high-demand munitions supplied to US allies and partners in future conflicts, using profits from FMS programs.