The American company General Atomics has presented the design of its first air-launched cruise missile, the Strike Missile.

Reporters of The War Zone reported this from the annual Surface Navy Association symposium.

A division of the Electromagnetic Systems Group, which specializes in producing electric motors and other electrical equipment for military use, has presented a project of its own cruise missile called Strike Missile.

GA representatives kept the dimensions of the new missile, its payload, and its effective range secret. They only noted that it is intended for use from aircraft platforms. In addition, they warned that the project’s working name could be changed.

A visual representation of the new weapon reveals some details of the project. In particular, the missile with a tetrahedral elongated fuselage received a turbojet engine with an air intake located below. There are narrow aerodynamic surfaces on the side surfaces of the fuselage.

The new project may be focused on the niche of stealthy long-range missiles, such as the Storm Shadow or AGM-158 JASSM.

Finding cheap solutions for the war with China

It is worth noting that the development of the new missile is taking place simultaneously with the Pentagon’s active efforts to find and develop a simple-to-manufacture and cheap cruise missile that will cost under $150,000.

The U.S. Air Force’s Office of Weapons and the Defense Innovation Agency have jointly launched the Enterprise Test Vehicle program, which aims to develop the simplest and cheapest cruise missile to manufacture based on available commercial technologies.

“The developers will integrate off-the-shelf commercial components wherever possible to mitigate supply chain bottlenecks and keep production costs low. They will minimize the use of expensive materials and ensure rapid production, which is impossible with more complex analogs,” the statement reads.

The program’s requirements are designed to ensure that the United States can quickly deploy missile production based on commercially available non-military components if necessary. This should diversify and secure future logistics and simplify production scaling.

The War Zone reported that, according to the requirements, the prototypes of the air-launched cruise missile are likely to have a range of up to 1,000 kilometers. It was also determined that the new weapon should be integrated into the combat system of American fighters so that they do not need to be modernized.

Earlier, the US companies General Electric Aerospace and Kratos Turbine Technologies began developing inexpensive turbofan engines for cruise missiles with a thrust of about 800 pounds, which can be increased to 3000 pounds.