• The Pentagon awarded a massive $3.5 billion to RTX Corporation for more AIM-120 air-to-air missiles.
• The foreign military sales aspect includes a long list of US allies and partners.
• The AIM-120 AMRAAM is a pivotal weapon for many US partners, and global usage has surged.

The Pentagon just inked a record $3.5 billion deal with RTX for AIM-120 air-to-air missiles. It's a massive order that underscores how global conflicts are stressing stockpiles and dramatically increasing demand for key munitions.

Demand for the AMRAAM has been growing amid global crises like the war in Ukraine and fights in the Middle East.

The massive deal, which was part of a total $7.8 billion awarded to Lockheed Martin and RTX for missile production, was signed late last month. Other systems in the contracts include Lockheed Martin's Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) and the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM).

The AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, or AMRAAM, award was especially notable, not only for its size but the number of allies and partners that will receive the missile.

The Foreign Military Sales portion of the massive contract includes Japan, Canada, Germany, the UK, and Ukraine, RTX told Business Insider. The Department of Defense contract details identified sales to 19 allies and partners.

It also comes less than a year after a $1.2 billion contract for the AMRAAM, another record-breaking deal that followed a $1.15 billion deal in 2023. These three deals point to a demand to refill and expand stockpiles.

"As global conflicts intensify and air threats become more sophisticated, AMRAAM continues to give allied forces a decisive edge in combat," said Sam Deneke, the president of Air & Space Defense Systems at Raytheon, said in a statement.

The AIM-120 has seen use in Ukraine, with both Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets and Norway's Kongsberg Defense and Raytheon's National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS). The AMRAAM has also seen use in the Middle East by the US planes battling the Houthis and other threats. These conflicts pull from US and allied stockpiles.

The weapon is an all-weather, beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile with active radar for decreased dependence on the aircraft for intercepts. There are multiple variants of the AIM-120.

The newest one is the AIM-120D, which has a reported range exceeding 100 miles. It's highly useful for taking out air threats like uncrewed aerial vehicles and drones, but it's also an expensive tradeoff, with each AIM-120 costing around $1 million.

The US has pursued alternatives to taking out these threats, and military officials have acknowledged that the need for more cost-effective answers.

Part of the demand for the AIM-120 is that it's a highly desired system by militaries around the world. It is an essential weapon as countries consider air dominance and defense demands in modern warfighting.

Despite many other investments in air-to-air systems, "the AIM-120 AMRAAM series remains and likely will remain the backbone of Western and Western-aligned air-to-air weaponry for many years to come," Justin Bronk, an airpower expert at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, told Business Insider.

RTX highlighted that the AMRAAM is used on 14 different platforms, including fighter aircraft and surface-to-air missile systems, in 44 countries and is combat-proven.

Global usage of the missile, Bronk said, has far outpaced production, making the new contract not only important for filling stockpiles but also increasing production capacity.

Decades of steady usage have left stockpiles thin, with lawmakers in Washington expressing concern about existing stocks. Among other efforts to boost the numbers, the US and Japan are now considering co-production of the AIM-120 to help close the gap.

• The US Army fired a Standard Missile-6 from its Mid-Range Capability, or Typhon, system in Australia.
• The successful live-fire test sank a maritime target.
• The MRC's deployment in the region has previously and repeatedly irritated China.

The US Army fired its new MRC missile system in the Western Pacific for the first time, striking and sinking a maritime target.

The Mid-Range Capability, or Typhon, missile system drew China's ire during a previous deployment, with Beijing repeatedly warning that its presence risks escalating tensions. The Army sees the weapon as an essential strike asset that closes a critical capability gap in the region.

The Army said on Tuesday that the 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force successfully fired a Standard Missile-6 using the versatile MRC launcher and sank an unspecified sea target. The test occurred earlier this month during the joint Talisman Sabre exercise in northern Australia.

The service said it was the first time the land-based MRC had been fired west of the international date line, which splits the Pacific Ocean.

"The deployment of the MRC and successful execution of a [Standard Missile-6] live fire against a maritime target is another significant step forward in our ability to deploy, integrate, and command and control advanced land-based maritime strike capabilities," Col. Wade Germann, commander of the 3rd MDTF, said.

While this was the first live test of the MRC in the region, it has been deployed there before, notably during a joint exercise with the Philippines last year. The MRC is a high-value system for the Army, filling both a capability and range gap by providing a flexible way to fire both the SM-6s and the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile. 

The MRC's development followed the 2019 US withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty over concerns about Russian violations. The treaty banned nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,000 kilometers.

The withdrawal, overseen by the first Trump administration and driven by Moscow's SSC-8/9M729 missile, opened the door to the development of previously banned weapons.

When the MRC was first deployed to the Philippines, China was quick to express its frustration. In September of last year, Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China's foreign military, called the deployment "a move to turn back the wheel of history," adding that "it gravely threatens regional countries' security, incites geopolitical confrontation, and has aroused high vigilance and concerns of countries in the region."

Earlier last year, he said that Beijing "strongly opposes the US strengthening forward deployment at China's doorstep."

China notably maintains a large arsenal of ballistic missiles, including many intermediate-range systems able to threaten US and allied forces in the region.

China also expressed its irritation to the Philippines last year. In August 2024, Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo said that his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, had expressed concerns the weapon could destabilize the security and relations of the region and that when they discussed it, China "made it very dramatic." China has warned Manila against igniting an arms race.

Beijing has said the Philippines, a key US ally, is serving American interests to the detriment of its own. Manila has expressed interest in the MRC's capabilities as a useful combat capability.

China's US embassy didn't immediately respond to BI's request for comment on the test.

The MRC is a work in progress for the Army, which is still exploring how best to employ it. During the MRC's deployment to the Philippines, US personnel also tinkered with and reworked the system in the field, according to a Government Accountability Office report earlier this year, providing user input that led to "multiple design changes." 

The test of the MRC in Australia, the Army said, validated the ability to forward deploy long-range precision fires. It also, Germann added, provided valuable insights and lessons for future land-based maritime strike capabilities. Mobile launchers with the ability to strike targets on land and at sea have tremendous potential in Pacific combat.

• The US Army secretary and a top general told BI about the service's plans for what it flies.
• In the coming years, the Army wants to operate far more unmanned aircraft than manned.
• US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants the Army to reduce its crewed attack helicopter force and replace it with drones.

US Army leadership told Business Insider it wants to be flying a lot more uncrewed aircraft than crewed ones in the coming years. We are talking about a tremendous increase in the number of drones.

Its ambitions, which align with goals outlined by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's recent directive, come from a vision for what Army officials and the Trump administration have described as a more lethal force ready for future warfare.

In an interview with Business Insider, US Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll and Gen. James Rainey, the commanding general of Army Futures Command, said that unprecedented changes in warfare are fueling plans to overhaul what the Army flies.

"We believe there's a role for some manned aircraft," Rainey explained, "Big picture-wise, right now, about 90% of the things we're flying have humans in them and 10% don't. And I believe over the next several years, we would like to invert that."

The plans to give every division 1,000 drones within the next two years, he added, speak to the "aggressiveness" with which the Army is going after the new uncrewed objectives.

Earlier this year, Hegseth sent out a memo on strategic transformations within the Army, laying out goals and timelines for the service, including force restructuring and cuts to certain programs and systems that altogether represent one of the largest Army revamps since the end of the Cold War. The push is estimated to cost around $36 billion over the next five years.

In the memo, Hegseth indicated that crewed attack helicopter formations would be reduced, restructured, and augmented with drone swarms capable of overwhelming adversaries.

War-winning Army capabilities and the ones that aren't

Driscoll said this big change, along with others identified in the DoD memo, is already underway and largely focused on examining what systems no longer make sense in the context of the Army's vision for its future and what systems will replace them.

He mentioned the AH-64D Apache attack helicopter as one platform that no longer aligns with plans for the transformation of the force. "The flying costs on that were $10,000 an hour," the secretary said of the older Deltas, pointing out that the figure is about twice the cost of the newer Echo variant of the aircraft.

"Those are the kinds of decisions that I think we had let linger and fester for too long as an Army for all sorts of reasons," Driscoll said. "What we are trying to do is take a hard look at these things," he explained, and decide whether they align with what the warfighter needs.

Last month, Lt. Gen. Joseph Ryan, the Army's deputy chief of staff for operations, plans, and training, said that the Deltas are no longer "a war-winning capability that we can fight with and win today." Even the more advanced Echos, he said, are "on the cusp of being capabilities where we don't necessarily see them contributing to the fight the way they have done perhaps in the past."

The Army plans to shelve the Delta variant and further examine other crewed aircraft that may no longer be sufficiently effective. It is also reviewing other helicopter models and plans to reduce the number of helos operated.

The future of war is robotic

More broadly, uncrewed aircraft are being seen as alternatives that soldiers can send forward on the battlefield to do missions that crewed aircraft have traditionally done.

There's still a place for crewed aircraft in the Army. Some helicopters, for example, still boast value for landing troops behind or around enemy positions to surprise and surround them. But future operations are expected to be a whole lot more robotic, with an Army aviation portfolio that more heavily relies on unmanned systems integrated with manned ones.

The Army sees itself at a turning point. Senior defense officials appointed by President Donald Trump have called out what they see as excessive spending, outdated systems and weapons, and a need to expedite changes to be prepared to deter or fight a future conflict. It's part of efforts to maximize readiness, increase lethality, and get soldiers what they need most.

Such aims aren't entirely new, though, and execution will be key. During the previous administration, for instance, the Army was already discussing the need for more uncrewed systems and changes to its aircraft fleet, especially with the cancellation of the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft program.

Last year, Rainey told lawmakers that for scouting and recon missions "the right thing to do is to use unmanned systems and not put humans in harm's way."

A major motivator for many of the ongoing transformation efforts is China, which the Pentagon has referred to as a pacing challenge. Officials and lawmakers in Washington see China's meteoric military growth and modernization and are pursuing capabilities that will allow the US military to deter aggression and, if necessary, overcome that rapidly evolving fighting force in armed combat.

Drones, from pocket-sized aircraft to quadcopters to bigger warfighting assets, are a key part of these efforts, providing a range of combat capabilities en masse for a relatively low cost compared to some other US weapons programs.

The Pentagon has been working to expedite the development and deployment of uncrewed aerial systems across the services, recognizing their value as this technology sprints onto the scene in big ways. Army soldiers have been testing different types of reconnaissance and strike drones are being tested in areas like the Indo-Pacific region, learning how to adapt unmanned systems to the challenges of different missions and environments.

That's a key aspect of an ongoing "transformation in contact" initiative, which focuses on Army units being given free rein to use different capabilities during training and exercises to see how the systems might work best.

The value of drones, particularly the smaller systems, has been especially visible in the war in Ukraine, which Army leaders continue to study. Ukrainian operators fly drones for intelligence-gathering and strike missions, among others.

Due to extensive electronic warfare countermeasures on the battlefield, both sides are heavily relying on fiber-optic drones to maintain a stable connection between the operator and system while also exploring new technology, like AI-enabled drones that can resist jamming. The US is not in a similar situation, but it is looking to innovate as if it were.

• A US Navy guided-missile submarine was involved in recent strikes on Iran's nuclear program.
• Ohio-class cruise-missile subs host massive firepower and are difficult to detect.
• But they're going to be decommissioned in coming years.

A US Navy guided-missile submarine launched dozens of missiles into Iran as part of the larger US attack on the country's nuclear program, the vessel's Tomahawk cruise missiles doing significant damage.

President Donald Trump singled out US submarines and the fleet's guided-missile submarines after the strikes, praising them as "far and away the strongest and best equipment we have" and "the most powerful and lethal weapons ever built."

But despite the latest demonstration of their power, the days of the US fleet's biggest missile shooters are numbered.

No other US warship carries even close to as many cruise missiles as its four aging Ohio-class cruise missile subs, raising questions about coming capabilities and filling that gap.

Strikes on Iran

The US military launched a massive strike on Iran's nuclear program, targeting facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan on Saturday.

While much of the focus for the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes has been on the B-2 Spirit bombers and the huge bombs they dropped, another key part of the operation involved a Navy guided-missile submarine firing from an undisclosed location in the Middle East.

In comments about the operation, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine didn't specify which submarine was involved, and the Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense declined to discuss it due to operational security concerns.

The term "guided-missile submarine," which Caine used, refers to the Navy's Ohio-class SSGNs, and the large number of missiles launched during the operation also points to an Ohio-class boat.

Ohio-class submarines, built by General Dynamics' Electric Boat division, were originally a force of 18 nuclear-powered ballistic missile vessels first commissioned in 1981 with a sole mission of the highest stakes: carrying missiles with nuclear warheads. In the 2000s, the Navy converted four of them into cruise-missile submarines, ending their role in the nuclear forces and turning them into the US fleet's most stealthy and numerous missile shooters.

Although they're now 40 years old, these capable submarines are some of the quietest in the world, Bryan Clark, a retired Navy submarine officer and defense expert at the Hudson Institute, told Business Insider.

"This is in large part because of their size, which allows for substantial dampening and sound silencing equipment," he said, "as well as their aggressive maintenance program. Each SSGN carries 154 Tomahawk missiles and can carry about two dozen special operators."

SSGN is an abbreviation for "subsurface guided nuclear," with SS standing for submarine, G for guided missile, and N for nuclear propulsion.

Those four subs can launch more than half of the missiles the Navy's submarine fleet is able to fire from vertical launch systems, according to the service.

Even the newest attack subs carry only a small fraction of an SSGN's missile arsenal, and surface warships must carry a mix of missiles in their vertical launchers to defend against aerial threats.

This past weekend's attack on Iran included 75 precision-guided weapons in total, including GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetration bunker-buster bombs dropped by US Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bombers. Trump, in the Monday Truth Social post that praised subs, said one SSGN had launched 30 Tomahawk missiles in total during the attack.

Reduced firepower

The Navy plans to decommission two of its Ohio-class SSGNs in 2026 and the other two in 2028, replacing them with Virginia-class Block V submarines. These won't be dedicated cruise missile submarines, but they will boast greater firepower than earlier Virginias.

Military leaders and experts have expressed concerns about the replacement plan and the loss of missile capacity.

"The US will experience a big drop in its capacity for stealthy missile attacks," Clark said. The Block V Virginia-class attack submarines will each be able to carry up to 40 Tomahawk missiles, far less than the Ohio SSGNs, a concern as the US attempts to turn its focus to higher-end threats and potential conflicts.

This means Navy officials will have to deploy four or more Virginia-class attack subs to fire as many long-range missiles, reducing the number of attack subs for other missions they are specially built for: surveillance and ship-killing.

Additionally, the Ohio-class SSGNs have two crews of about 150 sailors that rotate the sub back and forth, allowing it to maximize its deployed time. Over two decades of operations, these subs have earned reputations as workhorses.

Another problem is that the Block V submarines are facing years-long delays and rising costs due to persistent US Navy shipbuilding problems that could leave a capability gap.

A Navy review last year estimated the delay to contract delivery for Virginia Block Vs at approximately 24 months. Other top-priority programs, like the Constellation-class frigate, Virginia Block IV submarines, and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, are also behind schedule.

The Trump administration has made fixing the shipbuilding problems contributing to these delays a top priority, standing up an office in the White House dedicated to shipbuilding.

Recent congressional hearings have examined a number of problems, some dating back decades to the end of the Cold War. Issues like competitive pay for shipbuilders, workforce and labor problems, and training and shipbuilding capacity woes have repeatedly caused programs to run behind,

With the Virginia-class Block Vs delayed, retiring the Ohio-class submarines could limit the stealthy cruise-missile strike capabilities of the Navy's submarine force.

"Unless the Navy delays the Ohio retirements, the Navy's submarine-launched missile capacity will not return to today's levels until the mid-2030s," Clark said, when the Virginia Block Vs are expected to be completed.

And even when the Block Vs are delivered, they won't bring the same firepower.