At Sea Air Area 2025, CoAspire pulled again the curtain on its daring new undertaking: the Quickly Adaptable Inexpensive Cruise Missile (RAACM). Created utilizing DAPS AM expertise from Divergent, this 3D printed missile brings affordability, adaptability, and attain into the trendy battlefield.
RAACM is a cruise missile that appears roughly the dimensions of a 500-pound Mk.82 bomb however is designed to be dropped from a fighter jet, or launched from a cargo airplane pallet, and even fired from the deck of a ship. In comparison with conventional cruise missiles, which price thousands and thousands apiece, this can be very cost-effective. The message from CoAspire’s management is obvious: typically, in fashionable warfare, amount will be simply as lethal as high quality.
Doug Denneny, CoAspire’s CEO, made the case at Sea Air Area. “Cruise missiles are often very costly and have beautiful capabilities,” he mentioned in an interview with Naval Information. “However in at this time’s conflicts, you’ll be able to see that mass — a number of weapons launched directly — creates a functionality of its personal. Even when some don’t hit the goal, some will. And that modifications the end result.”
RAACM is constructed for that type of volume-centric warfare. Its affordability comes largely due to 3D printing. CoAspire partnered with Divergent Applied sciences, a frontrunner in additive manufacturing, to optimize the missile’s physique for gasoline effectivity and payload capability. By printing parts somewhat than machining them, they’ve freed up inner house for further gasoline and a bigger warhead — and made the system modular for numerous payload varieties.
Denneny defined that the design is tuned to stability long-range efficiency with impactful payloads. “We’ve optimized the gasoline house to go extraordinarily far and nonetheless carry a warhead that issues,” he mentioned. That’s no small feat, particularly when your missile has to compete with techniques that price 5 to 10 occasions extra.
Deployment flexibility is one other cornerstone of the RAACM design. The Air Power is funding integration with the F-15E Strike Eagle, however it’s not stopping there. The Navy has additionally allotted funds to make sure it really works with the F/A-18E/F Tremendous Hornet and the F-35 — crucial platforms for carrier-based and forward-deployed forces. RAACM’s compact measurement makes it splendid for plane that usually carry commonplace bombs. This implies present weapons racks don’t want a whole overhaul to accommodate it.
Then there’s Fast Dragon — the palletized munitions system that lets cargo planes drop long-range weapons from the again with no need any hardpoints. RAACM is a pure match. It turns cargo plane just like the C-130 or C-17 into missile carriers, dramatically increasing strike functionality with no single fighter jet taking off.
CoAspire isn’t stopping at air-launched ideas. Their imaginative and prescient contains ship- and ground-launched variants too, which might make RAACM a flexible multi-domain choice within the U.S. arsenal. Though these surface-launched concepts are nonetheless within the early phases of growth, they underscore this system’s ambition and the potential for the idea to have a far-reaching impression.
In March, CoAspire took the RAACM to the skies in a flight check from an A-4 plane within the Gulf of America. Denneny didn’t reveal many specifics, however he was clearly enthusiastic. “It was a house run,” he mentioned, including that the check validated RAACM’s steerage and accuracy techniques — an enormous milestone for a weapon that’s nonetheless in its early phases.
Different protection gamers, similar to Lockheed Martin, Anduril, and Basic Atomics, are additionally pursuing the low-cost, high-volume missile market. As Washington reevaluates its munitions stockpiles — significantly with an eye fixed on potential flashpoints within the Indo-Pacific — initiatives like RAACM have gotten important. The U.S. can’t afford to rely solely on beautiful, high-dollar weapons anymore. It wants mass, flexibility, and affordability — precisely what RAACM guarantees.
With the Indo-Pacific area rising more and more advanced and potential adversaries investing in drone swarms and anti-access methods, RAACM’s low-cost mannequin stands out as the reply. It may flood a contested house with sufficient precision firepower to overwhelm defenses with out bankrupting the Pentagon’s weapons price range.
Wanting ahead, CoAspire sees the RAACM as greater than only a area of interest weapon. Whereas the present focus is on air-launch functionality, the corporate’s broader roadmap contains scaling up the design, increasing to allied forces, and providing a plug-and-play platform for future payloads. From digital warfare modules to space denial tech, the modular physique may in the future carry excess of simply an explosive warhead.
