The Air Force is shifting toward buying large numbers of cheaper stand-off weapons rather than relying solely on a handful of expensive cruise missiles, aiming to make firepower more sustainable and overwhelming in future conflicts.
There’s an old military truism that quantity has a quality all its own, and we’re seeing that logic return to the forefront of U.S. strategy. In World War II the United States combined production scale with rapid technical fixes to outpace adversaries, and the same mindset is now being applied to air-delivered cruise missiles. Rather than betting everything on single, multi-million-dollar rounds, planners are moving toward munitions that cost a fraction of that price and can be bought in the thousands.
That approach acknowledges a simple fact: wars burn through ordnance fast, and expensive single-shot solutions can be unsustainable. If a new munition costs around $218,000 instead of $1.3 million, commanders can afford to expend multiple weapons to ensure target destruction without bankrupting stocks. Buying lots of lower-cost missiles changes the calculus for mission planners and forces potential adversaries to face a much higher volume of incoming threats.
The Pentagon is moving to buy thousands of affordable cruise missiles, reaching framework agreements with three companies on Wednesday.
The deals fall under the U.S. Air Force’s Family of Affordable Mass Missiles program, or FAMM. The Defense Department said it reached agreements with Anduril for its Barracuda-500, CoAspire for its Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile and Zone 5 Technologies for its Rusty Dagger.
The move boils down to cost-effectiveness. The Air Force is betting that low-cost weapons can do the work the service once reserved for far more expensive munitions.
Planners are explicitly breaking the program into two variants to give commanders flexibility across missions and platforms. One variant is lugged for fighters and bombers, the other is palletized for airlifters, both engineered for ranges between roughly 250 and 500 miles. That range covers the kind of stand-off engagements that let aircraft remain outside the densest layers of enemy air defenses while still affecting key targets deep inside hostile territory.
Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, designed to be fired at heavily defended targets from a safe distance, cost more than $1.3 million apiece. The service wants its new missiles for a fraction of that, closer to $218,000 per round, cheap enough to shoot many for less than it once cost to shoot one.
The FAMM program splits into a lugged variant carried by fighters and bombers (FAMM-L) and a palletized variant dropped from airlifters (FAMM-P), both with ranges of 250 to 500 miles.
The arithmetic is straightforward and, frankly, commonsense. When you can buy a weapon that’s an order of magnitude cheaper, the strategy shifts from conserving precious single shots to creating overwhelming salvos. That forces an opponent to either build more expensive defenses or accept higher attrition.
History shows how much production and iterative improvement matter. Early Sherman tanks were outgunned by German armor, but American industrial muscle produced large numbers and rapid upgrades that closed the performance gap. The famous line rings true: “One Tiger is as good as five Shermans. The problem is that the Americans always bring ten Shermans.” The U.S. should keep that lesson top of mind as it modernizes munitions procurement.
Technology costs also fall with scale: making more units encourages better manufacturing practices, attracts additional suppliers, and drives innovation that lowers unit costs. That trend applies to weapons as well as phones and laptops. A broad production base and competitive procurement can drive down prices while increasing availability for front-line units.
Operationally, having numbers matters in attrition-heavy campaigns and in the kind of distributed fights the Pentagon expects to face. If a modern adversary fields numerous cheap drones or missiles, we need a stockpile and doctrine that can outpace that threat. Buying affordable cruise missiles in quantity provides that option and restores a margin of superiority that expensive, limited inventories cannot guarantee.
The timing of this shift matters because U.S. forces are operating at high tempo across multiple theaters. Sustained operations in the Middle East and increased attention in other regions make munitions availability a strategic issue, not just a tactical one. Affordable mass weapons help maintain pressure without forcing hard choices between readiness and fiscal realities.
From a conservative viewpoint, this is smart stewardship of both force and taxpayer dollars. It leverages American industrial strength, emphasizes deterrence through massed capability, and avoids overreliance on a handful of gold-plated solutions. If adversaries build capacity, we should match it with cheaper, plentiful countermeasures that preserve decision space for commanders and keep American forces dominant.
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