Back in 2016, China adopted the PL-15 air-to-air missile, which has a launch range of up to 300 kilometers. In October 2022, they introduced an even more powerful missile of the same class, the PL-17, which boasts a launch range of 300-500 kilometers and is integrated into the armament of the J-16 (a Chinese copy of the Su-30).
Against this backdrop, the United States is clearly lagging behind China in the aviation missile segment, attempting to catch up with the AIM-260A JATM project, which has a range of up to 200 kilometers and has been in development for over five years. However, there has not been any significant progress in this project so far.
As reported by the portal Naval News, NAVAIR (the U.S. Navy's Air-to-Air Missile Office) has released a render of the PMA-259, which finally revealed the external appearance of the AIM-260A JATM air-to-air missile.
This is indeed a significant event, as the potential appearance of the AIM-260A JATM had been kept under wraps until now, only broadly described as being visually and dimensionally similar to the AIM-120 AMRAAM. However, the render clearly shows that there are some visual differences between the two mentioned missiles.
Additionally, in 2022, the U.S. Air Force published a render depicting the launch of the AIM-260A JATM missile from the internal bay of an F-22 aircraft. However, it’s important to note that this represents virtually all the available visual materials on this missile, which has been in development for over five years.
Publicly available data indicates that testing of the AIM-260A JATM using QF-16 target drones commenced under complete secrecy in 2020. A degree of this secrecy was lifted in October 2021 when a video of one of these test stages was released. At that time, it was anticipated that this advanced air-to-air missile would enter mass production in 2023, but there is currently no information regarding the actual implementation of this plan.
Moreover, neither the Navy nor the U.S. Air Force has disclosed their segment of data regarding real progress in the AIM-260A JATM program, leaving us to rely solely on rare images of this missile available in the public domain.
The render from NAVAIR also mentions the AIM-174 as a conversion of the naval surface-to-air missile SM-6 into an air-to-air missile, which is said to have a combat range of 500+ km and is intended for airborne missile defense. However, in this case, we are still discussing a research development rather than a serial sample. The last mention of AIM-174 testing was in the fall of 2024, and when this missile will enter mass production remains unknown as well.
