The Air Force has a munitions problem, and Operation Epic Fury made it impossible to ignore. Five weeks of sustained air operations over Iran have consumed precision-guided weapons — JDAMs, JASSMs, LRASMs — at a pace that has strained stockpiles built up over two decades. The weapons work brilliantly. There just are not enough of them, and they cost too much to replace quickly.

Enter the Standoff Attack Weapon. On April 6, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center announced an industry day at Eglin Air Force Base on June 17, inviting defence contractors to pitch their ideas for a new, affordable, air-launched cruise missile that can be fielded by 2033. The message to industry is blunt: we need standoff range, we need precision, and we need it cheap enough to buy by the thousand.

The Affordability Imperative

The JASSM-ER — the workhorse standoff cruise missile of Epic Fury — costs roughly $1.4 million per round. It is a superb weapon: stealthy, long-ranged, and devastatingly accurate. But at that price, every missile fired is a budget line item that takes years to replenish. The Air Force fired more JASSMs in the first week of Epic Fury than it typically procures in a year.

The SoAW is designed to fill a different niche. It does not need to replace the JASSM — it needs to supplement it. An affordable cruise missile that can strike fixed targets at standoff range with acceptable precision, produced in volumes that make attrition warfare sustainable. Think thousands, not hundreds.

The concept is not new. The Air Force first explored SoAW in an August 2022 request for information, which floated a fielding timeline of 2030–2033. That effort quietly expired without a follow-up contract. But the lessons of Epic Fury — and the growing possibility of a future conflict in the Pacific that would demand even larger munition stockpiles — have revived the programme with new urgency.

What the Air Force Wants

The June industry day at Eglin will focus on defining the weapon’s “desired attributes” — a deliberately broad term that gives contractors room to propose creative solutions. Based on the 2022 RFI and the current operational context, analysts expect the Air Force to prioritise several key features: standoff range sufficient to keep launch aircraft outside the range of modern surface-to-air missiles, GPS/INS guidance with possible terminal seekers, a warhead effective against fixed infrastructure targets, and — above all — a unit cost dramatically lower than the JASSM.

Multiple companies are likely positioning for the competition. Lockheed Martin, which builds the JASSM, has obvious advantages in standoff weapon design. Raytheon’s experience with the Tomahawk and SM-6 gives it relevant cruise missile expertise. And newer entrants like Anduril and L3Harris have been pitching low-cost autonomous munitions that could fit the SoAW profile.

The Bigger Munitions Picture

SoAW is one piece of a broader rethink of how the Air Force arms itself. The Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) — a separate low-cost cruise missile programme — is also advancing rapidly, with flight tests completed in early 2026. Together, these programmes signal a fundamental shift: the era of exquisite, expensive, small-batch precision weapons is giving way to an era of affordable mass.

The logic is simple. Against a peer adversary with thousands of targets — air defences, command nodes, logistics hubs, naval bases — the Air Force needs weapons it can afford to expend at scale. A $1.4 million missile is a precision scalpel. A $200,000 missile is an arsenal. Both have their place. But you cannot win a long war with scalpels alone.

The contractors will gather at Eglin in June. The weapon they design will shape American air power for the next two decades.

Sources: Air & Space Forces Magazine, Aviation Week, Defence News, Inside Defense