Here is a cheap way to terrify a naval planner: take an ordinary cargo plane, roll a pallet of cruise missiles out the back, and let them fly themselves to the target. The US Air Force has been perfecting that trick for years under the name Rapid Dragon. Now Embraer wants in. At Farnborough, the Brazilian planemaker and the defence-tech firm Anduril signed a memorandum to hang Anduril’s pallet-launched Barracuda-500M cruise missile on the C-390 Millennium airlifter — turning a transport into a stand-off missile shooter without giving up its day job.

If the concept sounds familiar, it should. We covered the Pentagon’s version of this idea earlier this month in Missiles de croisière bon marché, largués depuis des avions cargo. The Embraer deal is the same disruptive logic wearing a different flag: mass, produced cheaply, delivered from aircraft nobody thinks of as bombers.

Missiles on a pallet

The method is deceptively simple. Missiles ride standard cargo pallets; a roll-on/roll-off mission kit and ordinary airdrop procedures push the pallet out the rear ramp. A drag chute stabilises it, the munition separates, its engine lights, and it flies autonomously on Anduril’s Lattice guidance to coordinates loaded before launch or fed in mid-flight. A concept image at Farnborough showed some two dozen rounds on a single pallet — one C-390 salvoing a swarm.

The Barracuda-500M is the strike member of Anduril’s Barracuda family: a low-cost, mass-producible cruise missile with a range around 500 nautical miles, a roughly 100-pound warhead, and a reported unit cost near US$200,000 — about a tenth of a Tomahawk. Anduril claims it needs half the build time and a fraction of the parts of a conventional missile.

Why a Brazilian airlifter?

The C-390 is a fast, jet-powered tactical transport already flying for or ordered by a dozen air forces, from Brazil and Portugal to the Netherlands, Sweden and Hungary. It has been adapted for aerial refuelling and electronic-warfare roles; a palletized strike option is one more way to make a versatile airframe earn its keep. For smaller air forces, it is a tempting proposition — long-range firepower without buying a fleet of dedicated bombers.

For now it is only a memorandum — a joint pursuit, not a signed programme. But the direction of travel is unmistakable. The line between “cargo plane” and “bomber” is getting blurrier by the airshow.

Sources: Embraer; The Aviationist; FlightGlobal; Breaking Defense; Anduril (21 July 2026).