The US Army and Marine Corps (USMC) have ordered a 55000 units of AGR-20 APKWS laser-guided 70 mm rockets at a cost of $1.743 billion for various platforms.
AGR-20 APKWS, which has already become a mainstream weapon for the US helicopters and close air support aircraft, has received a major order that will significantly expand the inventory. The US DoD announced the order, including 55000 units, which means a doubling of the fact that 50000+ units have already been produced at a cost of $1.743 billion.
While AGR-20 APKWS was initially intended as an all-rounder guided munition with low cost as a bolt-on guidance kit for the widely used Hydra rockets, the past few years have been a scene to the birth of air-to-air use.
On two occasions, the potential of laser-guided rockets as low-cost air-to-air missiles has been demonstrated. One includes the ground-based use against UAVs, which Ukraine is employing, while the other is the use by US F-16 fighters against Houthi UAVs.
The emergence of a new role might have been a catalyst in this major order, considering the concerns over the masses of cheap UAVs threatening important facilities or naval platforms.
While procurement is one thing, adapting AGR-20 APKWS further for the new role is another. Recently, BAE Systems unveiled the dual-mode APKWS dubbed FALCO, incorporating an IR seeker on top of the fin-mounted laser seekers for a semi fire-and-forget capability. With the IR seeker, the laser designation only serves as an initial illumination to tell the missile where to go, and the IR seeker does the rest so that swarm attacks can be intercepted more efficiently.
Other countries have also begun experimenting with the use of their counterparts to APKWS against air targets, with the recent example being Turkiye. ROKETSAN successfully tested CİRİT from the new configuration of PUSU weapon system using AESA radars on top of the optical system against a fixed-wing UAV.
Author: Kaan Azman
Editor:Özgür Ekşi
