US Navy's new Top Gun missile makes aircraft carriers all but invulnerable to Chinese attack

Telegraph

28-02-2025

In a surprise move last summer, the US Navy revealed a new and extremely powerful air-to-air missile – an air-launched version of the Raytheon SM-6, normally fired from a vertical launch silo aboard a warship but also compatible with ground-based launchers.
The radar-guided SM-6, redesignated the AIM-174B for air-to-air use, is a massive missile weighing nearly a ton and ranging at least 220 miles – if not farther. And it 'will massively change the current attack-defence model of war at sea,' according to Weapons Magazine, a government-owned trade publication in China.
US Naval War College analyst Ian Easton helpfully translated and summarised the Chinese article.
Ranging more than twice as far as America's next-best air-to-air missiles, the Raytheon AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, the AIM-174B – which doesn't yet have an official nickname – hugely expands the volume of air space that the US Navy's carrier air wings and their F-18 Hornet fighters can control.
That, in turn, has the effect of pushing back the Chinese air force's Xi'an H-6 bombers, and reducing the effectiveness of the bombers' anti-ship missiles, which Beijing is largely counting on to damage or sink American carriers in the event of a major war in the western Pacific region. On such a mission, H-6 bombers each carry between four and six YJ-18 anti-ship missiles ranging as far as 340 miles.
Weapons Magazine crunched the numbers. 'Originally, F/A-18E fighters could stay on patrol for 125 minutes up to 270 kilometres [167 miles] from their carriers, carrying three external fuel tanks and six AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles,' the magazine noted.
'If they were refuelled once, this range could be extended out to 370 kilometres [186 miles]. A fighter radius of 370 kilometres plus the AIM-120 missile's range of 160 kilometres [99 miles] equals 530 kilometres [285 miles]. If that fighter is instead armed with the air-launched variant of the SM-6, its effective radius goes up to 870 kilometres [541 miles] or more.'
'This,' the Chinese publication asserted, 'is a shocking distance. Basically, it allows them to shoot down the other side's [bombers] before they can launch their anti-ship missiles.'
That's precisely what the US Navy hopes to do. Recall that the AIM-174B is a much-delayed direct replacement for the AIM-54 Phoenix, a 100-mile-range anti-bomber missile that the US fleet's F-14 Tomcat fighters carried during the later decades of the Cold War. The original Top Gun movie dated from that era and saw Maverick and Goose flying the iconic swing-wing, Mach 2+ Tomcat, which also made an appearance in the recent sequel.
The Tomcat/Phoenix combo would've targeted Soviet bombers hunting American carriers. Today's Hornets with their AIM-174Bs will target Chinese bombers hunting the same American carriers. The appearance of the air-launched SM-6 marks a return to the old era of truly full-fat Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air-to-air combat. The AMRAAM is technically a BVR weapon, but the new, massive AIM-174B is the real thing. Other than that and the newer missile's superior range, the US Navy's emerging 'outer air battle' doctrine is essentially a copy-and-paste of its Cold War doctrine.
The Chinese author breathlessly predicted the US Air Force might also adopt the AIM-174B. In fact, there's no sign of that happening, as the Air Force seems determined to develop its own longer-range missiles. Moreover, the Pentagon is struggling to acquire more than 125 SM-6/AIM-174B missiles a year, mostly owing to industrial constraints and the missiles' high cost: around $5 million per unit.
Unless and until the Americans can reliably produce many more AIM-174Bs, the new missile may represent a niche capability – one that air wing commanders can afford to use only sparingly.
The Pentagon is well aware of its constraints, however – and has crafted a plan to expand SM-6/AIM-174B production to 300 missiles a year by 2028. At that rate, the Chinese author's worst fears may become reality. Their magazines stuffed with AIM-174Bs, US Navy flattops could sail more confidently into the most dangerous waters bordering China. SM-6s launched from their escorting destroyers would also offer a defence against anti-ship ballistic missiles fired from ashore – perhaps even hypersonic ones. Even if the Chinese could develop a firm idea where the carriers were, a difficult feat, they would struggle to hit them through such defences.
If there's a risk in the American's plan, it's President Donald Trump's chaotic management of the federal budget. Trump has demanded the Navy and the other military services each divert eight percent of their annual budgets to Trump's personal priorities including domestic border patrols.
Budgetary reprogramming on that scale could gut many Navy programmes, including this one.