AURORA, Colo.—Lockheed Martin [LMT] is developing the Common Multi-Mission Truck System (CMMT–“comet”)–what could serve as a drone, sensor, or a high-subsonic cruise missile that is to cost $150,000 per unit or less and to be a modular weapon that military forces can alter on the go for different missions from cargo planes, fighters, and bombers at ranges up to 1,000 miles, a company official said on Monday during a briefing at the Air and Space Forces Association’s Warfare Symposium here.
In addition, a smaller CMMT version could serve as a “long-range launched effect” from helicopters, Lockheed Martin said.
Long-range cruise missiles, such as Lockheed Martin’s AGM-158A Joint Air-to-Surface Strike Missile and AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), can cost $1.5 million per copy.
“We understand that in a global conflict, in the kind of conflicts we’re gonna have maybe against a peer competitor, being able to get mass on targets is important,” Michael Rothstein, vice president of air weapons and sensors at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, told reporters here on Monday.
“We know we gotta be able to produce at more rate, and we know we have to work not only with some of the exquisite high-end weapons…such as JASSM and LRASM, but we are also listening and understanding that there’s a need to bring more affordable mass to that target–think of it like a low-cost cruise missile, like a lower-cost kind of JASSM,” he said.
While the Trump administration may alter Air Force plans, the service said last year that its inventory of high-end munitions is sufficient and that the service was moving to field lower-cost,
$100,000 models in the coming years to bolster capacity to deter China and Russia (Defense Daily, Nov. 13, 2024).
Such munitions may include the “Franklin” low-cost cruise missile–so named as a nod to soul legend Aretha Franklin and her hit song Respect. The homage is also meant to connote “respect” for the low-cost, high-punch missile under development, though the “Franklin” name may change, Air Combat Command has said.
Last fall, an Air Force official said that a low-cost cruise missile is in the final stages of development by Leidos [LDOS] and has made the cut line for funding by U.S. Special Operations Command’s fiscal year 2026 budget request (Defense Daily, Oct. 4, 2024). SOCOM has conducted tests of the Black Arrow Small Cruise Missile on an AC-130J aircraft.
Since 2021, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Rapid Dragon program has tested the launch of palletized munitions, such as JASSM, from cargo aircraft, such as the C-17 and C-130J (Defense Daily, Dec. 17, 2021).
“As the Air Force is thinking about affordable mass, you take that same concept, [and] you resize potentially the pallet,” Rothstein said on Monday. “Instead of holding a JASSM maybe it holds something a little smaller, and instead of putting maybe 9 in this box of pallets, you put 25 of them [in] for this weapon we call ‘comet.’ But you really need to think about CMMT as an air vehicle because from the get-go this air vehicle was designed digitally…with open architectures that will make it much easier for suppliers to plug and play their components in ways that we really haven’t done as well before.”
“We designed [CMMT] with supply chain in mind,” Rothstein said. “One of the things we’re gonna do later this year is show the ability to plug and play three different engines on the same day.”
Conceivably, a cargo aircraft could carry 100 CMMTs in a “four pack of 25,” Rothstein said.
Lockheed Martin said that is has worked with its Skunk Works division to ensure the company can build many CMMTs rapidly to be weapons, drones, or sensors and to ensure that CMMT can easily undergo maintenance in the field.