Ares Industries developing Low Cost Cruise Missile
August 26, 2024
The growing shift towards a ‘system of systems’ approach has highlighted the issue of affordability for the unmanned ‘adjuncts’ and ‘effectors’ required. High costs have usually been a consequence of making these systems operationally effective, and this makes it impossible to use them in the numbers required.
Ares believes that recent conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine have shown that existing US anti-ship cruise missiles are too large and too expensive for the wars of today and are “low-volume, multi-million dollar, 3,000 lb behemoths meant to take out large cruisers and destroyers.”
A war with China in the Taiwan Strait would require large numbers of long range anti-ship weapons, in quantities that would quickly exhaust US stockpiles. Ares believes that very large and expensive missiles aren’t necessary to knock out the smaller corvettes and frigates that make up the bulk of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, let alone the growing number of swarming unmanned surface vessels. Its weapons will deliver smaller payloads at high subsonic speeds, over ranges of hundreds of miles.
Ares’ new class of anti-ship cruise missiles aims to deliver the capabilities required by the US DoD in a form factor that is ten times smaller and ten times cheaper, helping to fill the munitions gap faced by the US and helping to rebuild the US defence industrial base. The company has built multiple prototypes, flight-testing them in the Mojave Desert, and believes that it is on track to deliver early missile systems to customers by mid-2025.
Ares is focusing on ground and ship-launched variants initially, but aims to expand into the development of air-launched versions, and extended range variants carrying different payloads.
