The U.S. Air Force will soon test and evaluate a new class of low-cost missiles, which are now critically important for the American military given the shortage of affordable weapons in stockpiles, as well as the fact that likely adversaries are accumulating significant stocks of strike drones (for example, China has a Shahed analogue that flies 1,000 km and costs seven times cheaper), various types of missiles, etc.
Now the U.S. Air Force is apparently ready to evaluate some of the available solutions for truly cheap weapons and, as retired Colonel Mark Gunzinger states, this should effectively be the first step toward creating a full-fledged Family of Affordable Mass Munitions (FAMM).
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As Air and Space Forces Magazine reports, the first public mention of FAMM was contained in the Air Force's budget request for 2026, and the project itself was created several years ago, with its primary goal being to create an affordable air-to-surface munition.
Later it was decided not to limit itself strictly to this class and expand the range of cheap weapons. Among everything, the service's plans include procurement of over 3,000 cruise missiles costing no more than $218,000 per unit.
Today, the American defense-industrial complex can already offer the military a number of different developments in the direction of cheap aviation weapons.
This is, for example, cheap long-range Barracuda missiles from Anduril, of which an entire family has been developed and the longest-range can hit 900 km in addition to being able to be launched simply from pallets, they were also later adapted for ground launches.
There's also the CMMT (Common Multi-Mission Truck) option from Lockheed Martin, or more precisely two variants of these missiles at 650 km and 800 km, which are also very, very cheap their cost is declared by the company at $150,000 per unit.
Or the Black Arrow mini-cruise missile from Leidos, also known as SCM (Small Cruise Missile), which can also be launched from transport aircraft.
And very recently it became known that ERAM cruise missiles created for Ukraine will become the base for a new cheap air defense missile.
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