CoAspire’s RAACM leverages 3D printing techniques and a design philosophy shaped by affordability and modularity.
CoAspire presented a low-cost cruise missile designed to bring cheap, 3D-printed, long-range munitions to the U.S. and partner Air Forces at Sea Air Space 2025.
As the prime contractor of the Air Force’s Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile, CoAspire states that it aims to provide “an affordable and capable cruise missile at a fraction of the cost of other air-launched cruise missiles.”
“For the RAACM, if you think about the cost of cruise missiles, not only being very expensive, but they have very exquisite capabilities. What we found interesting, we see this also in current conflicts, is sometimes mass or quantity of weapons has a certain capability all of itself. It’s just as important sometimes as all of the exquisites,”
CoAspire CEO Doug Denneny told Naval News in an interview at Sea Air Space.
With recent conflicts highlighting the utility of massed, low-end fires of one-way attack drones and missiles, RAACM’s development could provide U.S. and partner air forces with a readily available source of precision long-range fires. Other defense contractors, such as Lockheed, General Atomics, and Anduril, have displayed similar concepts amid concerns about Washington’s missile stocks and the need for more munitions in the Indo-Pacific.
“Even though all of them won’t make it to the target, some of them will, as we’ve seen in current conflicts. And that creates a capability all of its own,” said Denneny.
With comparable dimensions to a GBU-38 or a Mk.82 500-pound bomb, CoAspire’s RAACM can be fielded on a variety of aircraft. While the Air Force has provided funding for ensuring RAACM is compatible with its fighters, such as the F-15E Strike Eagle, the U.S. Navy has also contributed additional funds to ensure compatibility with the service’s carrier-borne strike aircraft.
Alongside Strike Eagle, CoAspire’s RAACM is being designed with carrier operations via the F/A-18E/F and F-35. “It’s very important not only for the naval fighters but also the Air Forces of the world to have something that’s affordable in a space where normally cruise missiles are very expensive,” said Denneny.
Concept art from CoAspire includes surface launched – both from ground-based and ship-based canisters – as possibilities for RAACM. According to the company’s wesbite, larger developments of RAACM could reach out to “can travel hundreds of miles.” However, the company is currently focusing on appealing to aerial launched options. One conceptual employment was through Rapid Dragon, a palletized cruise missile deployment method that utilizes cargo aircraft.
RAACM’s design leverages Divergent Technologies’ additive manufacturing capabilities to reduce the cost of the missile and optimize its performance. Denneny acknowledged that the Mk.82-sized cruise missile needed to have range while also retaining “a warhead that matters.”
“From an air-launched perspective, the key is to have something that – not only can go very far, carry a very large warhead – but bring a lot of fuel. So what we’ve done is we’ve used a 3D-printed process that can actually optimize the fuel space so we can go extremely far, carry a warhead that matters, and have modularity. So we can do different payloads,” said Denneny.
The company recently conducted a flight test in March via an A-4 aircraft in the Gulf of America. While Denneny could not divulge many details, the test proved RAACM’s guidance and accuracy in what he described as a “home run.”
