The AIM-260 was supposed to be in squadron service in 2022. It is September 2026, the missile is still in development, and the first photograph of one only surfaced four months ago. For a weapon the U.S. Air Force calls essential to winning the next air war, that is a long time in the dark.

On 17 September the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin signed a framework agreement to ramp up production of it anyway.

That sounds like a contracting footnote. It is not. It is the moment a secret programme starts behaving like a production programme, and it tells you the U.S. military has decided it cannot wait any longer for an answer to China’s long-range air-to-air missiles.

What Was Actually Signed

The agreement does not buy missiles. It sets up the conditions to buy a great many of them later, which in defence procurement is often the harder part.

The Pentagon release describes it as establishing “a framework for future Multi-Year Procurement (MYP) of JATM, executing congressional authority to secure the nation’s highest-priority missile systems.” Lockheed Martin’s own statement calls it the foundational agreement for a multiyear procurement contract, still subject to Congressional approval.

The reasoning is spelled out unusually plainly in the Pentagon’s announcement.

Translated: the people who make rocket motors, seekers and control fins will not build new production lines on the strength of a one-year order. Tell them the orders are coming for a decade and they will. That is the entire point of a multi-year deal, and it is why this announcement matters more than the absence of a single hard number in it.

And there are no hard numbers. Asked how many missiles, at what cost, delivered when, the Pentagon declined to comment on all three.

Meanwhile, the Missile Is Still in Test

The framework deal landed a day after the head of the Air Force Test Center gave a rare public update on where JATM actually is. Speaking at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Brig. Gen. Mark Massaro said the programme is moving.

Massaro declined to discuss performance, citing operational security, and said the constraint he worries about is test throughput and infrastructure rather than the weapon itself. That is a meaningful distinction. “We do not have enough range time” is a very different problem from “the missile does not work.”

That form factor is one of the quietly clever decisions in the programme. By keeping JATM to roughly AMRAAM dimensions, the missile fits existing rails, existing internal bays and existing loading equipment. An F-22 Raptor carrying six AMRAAMs internally can carry six JATMs instead. Nothing has to be cut open.

Who Gets It, and in What Order

Marina degli Stati Uniti F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and Air Force F-22s are expected to be first to carry the AIM-260 operationally. Variants of the F-35 follow, then the F-47, the Air Force’s sixth-generation fighter. The missile has also been discussed as armament for Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the uncrewed fighters the Air Force now wants at least 500 of by 2032.

The releases confirm the framework covers foreign military sales too. Australia became the first confirmed export customer in August 2026 and plans to fit the missile to its F/A-18Fs, F-35As and EA-18G Growlers. Its MQ-28 Ghost Bat drones, which have already fired an AMRAAM, are an obvious candidate to follow.

Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat, the Australian uncrewed combat aircraft that has already launched an AMRAAM and is a plausible future AIM-260 carrier. The video shows the aircraft, not the missile.

Why the Hurry

One word: range. The whole justification for JATM is that an American fighter should not arrive at a merge already outranged, and the Chinese PL-15 put that in doubt. Beijing has not stopped there. The PL-17 is longer-legged again, and the Air Force has publicly sketched a future in which hostile air-to-air missiles reach 1,000 miles by 2050.

The American answer is not one missile but several. The Navy is fielding the AIM-174B Gunslinger, an air-launched Standard Missile-6. In August it revealed the AIM-424 Malice, already flight testing. The Air Force has floated a Long Range Weapon with a target reach of at least 1,000 nautical miles. Given how the last three programmes surfaced, it is reasonable to assume there is more that has not.

The AIM-260 is late. It is also, on the evidence of this week, no longer in danger of being quietly abandoned. After seven years of near-silence, that counts as news.

Sources: U.S. Department of War press release, 17 September 2026; Lockheed Martin press release; TWZ; Air & Space Forces Magazine