The U.S. Marine Corps legacy F/A-18C/D Hornets are getting a major boost in stand-off strike capability in the form of AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) cruise missiles. JASSM breathes new life into the aging Marine Hornets, enabling them to hit targets on land at substantially greater ranges than they can now, keeping the jets further away from threats, and helping to maintain their relevance going forward, especially in future high-end fights.
In August, personnel at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in California evaluated procedures for loading JASSMs onto Hornets as part of ongoing integration work, according to a release this week from the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing (3rd MAW). An F/A-18D from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232 (VMFA-232) was used for this validation and verification testing. Elements of Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 11 (MALS-11) also participated in the test event.
The Marine Corps is in the process of phasing out its F/A-18C/D Hornets, with the last of them expected to head into retirement at the end of the decade. Around 84 jets are expected to remain in service until the very end and are being heavily modernized in the meantime. Those upgrades include new APG-79(V)4 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars and improved electronic warfare suites. The Marines have at least been interested in integrating JASSM and potentially other longer-range weapons onto the aircraft for years now. You can read more about the Corps’ plans for the legacy Hornets here.
JASSM has substantially more reach than any strike weapon Marine Hornets can currently carry. Though the official maximum range for the baseline AGM-158A variant is classified, publicly available sources put it at between 230 and 330 miles. The extended-range AGM-158B JASSM-ER, the only version of JASSM currently in production, is understood to be able to fly roughly twice as far, at least. The AGM-48D Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles and AGM-84H/K Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response (SLAM-ER) derivatives available for Marine Hornets now have reported ranges of around at least 80 and 170 miles, respectively.
The missiles in the JASSM family are more survivable and lethal than the existing stand-off strike options for Marine legacy Hornets. This is thanks the their stealthy design and highly advanced navigation capabilities, which help them skirt hostile defenses and successfully reach their targets. The missiles’ use of an imaging infrared sensor with scene/image matching capability in the terminal phase helps the weapon find and hit its mark accurately even in the face of heavy radiofrequency electronic warfare jamming.
“The integration of the AGM-158A joint air-to-surface standoff missile into the F/A-18’s arsenal significantly enhances the Hornet’s capabilities, enabling it to strike targets from well beyond the reach of enemy air defenses,” Marine Maj. Bradley Kirby, an aviation ordnance officer with 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, said in a statement in the release about the testing at Miramar in August.
This, in turn, opens new options for employing Marine F/A-18C/Ds in future conflicts. Giving the Hornets the ability to employ JASSM could be especially valuable in potential high-end fights, such as one against China in the Pacific, where ever-growing air and missile defense threats are expected to present significant challenges even to more modern stealthy platforms. With the Hornet’s ability to operate from shorter airstrips, including ones on far-flung islands, thanks to deployable arresting gear systems, the Marines could also push JASSM-armed aircraft further forward to begin with.
Integrating JASSM on the Corps’ legacy Hornets also has broader implications in the near and long term. No other aircraft in the service’s current fleets can currently employ JASSM, though there are plans to integrate it onto all three variants of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. It’s also worth pointing out that AGM-158s are too big to fit inside the internal bays on any version of the F-35 and will have to be carried under their wings, which will increase their radar signature. The Marines are already in the process of supplanting their remaining F/A-18C/Ds, as well as AV-8B Harrier jump jets, with a mixture of F-35Bs and Cs.
“The JASSM not only surpasses the capabilities of any other weapon currently in the Hornet’s extensive weapons portfolio, but also the Marine Corps at large,” Maj. Kirby noted following the test event at Miramar. “This added capability will greatly increase 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing’s ability to support the joint force and enable greater freedom of maneuver across all operational domains.”
“The JASSM validation and verification process allowed Marines to contribute valuable feedback that will inform the development of checklists to be used by both the Marine Corps and the Navy against future adversaries,” Warrant Officer Josiah Hood, ordnance officer with VMFA-232, also said, highlighting how the integration of the missile on the F/A-18C/D is feed into plans to add these weapons to the F-35’s arsenal.
The expectation is that any future large-scale conflict will also require significant overall stand-off strike capacity. The Air Force’s work on the Rapid Dragon palletized munition system to turn cargo planes into platforms to launch JASSMs is a prime example of other ways the U.S. military is looking to address that demand. Arming Marine F/A-18C/Ds with AGM-158s also adds to the total available launch platforms for those missiles.
Integrating JASSMs onto legacy Hornets could open a door to adding other weapons to the available arsenal for those jets, including the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) derivative of the AGM-158. The Marines have also talked about integrating longer-range Harpoon variants and the latest AGM-154C-1 variant of the unpowered Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) glide bomb on their F/A-18C/Ds in the past. Earlier JSOW variants are already cleared for use on legacy Hornets. The Navy halted work on a cruise missile derivative of JSOW in 2021 ostensibly to focus resources on an extended-range version of LRASM.
It’s also interesting to note here that the U.S. Air Force is now in the process of acquiring Joint Strike Missiles (JSM), derived from the increasingly popular Naval Strike Missile (NSM) that is in U.S. Navy and Marine Corps service, primarily as a bridge to integrating the larger LRASM onto its F-35A. LRASM is also expected to be an option in the future for the other two existing F-35 variants.
JSM is less capable in many regards to JASSM and LRASM, but also significantly smaller and can fit inside the weapons bays on F-35As and Cs. JSM, which has a reported maximum range of around 350 miles, also has the ability to hit targets both on land and at sea. Plans to develop a version of LRASM with secondary land-attack capability have been axed, at least for the time being. All of this might make the JSM, which has already been fit-checked on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet along with a host of other aircraft, an attractive additional stand-off strike option for Marine legacy Hornets.
There has also been a surge in interest in new lower-cost cruise missiles and other types of stand-off munitions recently across the U.S. military that might feed into future Marine planning for the F/A-18C/D.
Just integrating JASSM onto the Marine Corps’ legacy Hornets will give the jets a major boost in capability in the twilight of their careers.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com