U.S. Army seeks new short-range missile similar to JAGM, Hellfire

The U.S. Army wants to know if defense companies can build a new short-range guided missile similar to two weapons already in its arsenal, the Joint Air-to-Ground Missile and the Hellfire, with actual production starting by early 2028. Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, published the request August 25 on behalf of the Army’s missile procurement office.

For now, this is just market research, not an actual order. The Army is asking industry whether anyone out there already has a working missile, ready to build in bulk, that fits what the service needs. It wants a weapon that works in bad weather, can push through electronic jamming that blocks GPS signals, and can dodge modern countermeasures designed to throw missiles off target.

The Army laid out specific numbers: a missile that can hit targets anywhere from about 500 meters to 8 kilometers (5 miles) or farther away, and one that can be fired from helicopters, drones, ground vehicles or boats using a standard launcher. On the target list: tanks and armored vehicles, command posts, enemy air defense radars, small attack boats, and drones.

That last item, drones, is not a hypothetical use case. Missiles from the same Hellfire family the Army is describing are already being used for exactly that job, and not just on paper. Ukraine’s 302nd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade recently showed off a homemade air defense system called STASH, built by bolting AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire missiles onto a radar and welding the whole setup onto a military truck.

Screengrab from video posted to social media

The Longbow variant carries a radar seeker that lets it lock onto a target on its own after launch, useful against a fast-moving drone. Paired with a compact radar built to spot small, low-flying aircraft, the system gives Ukrainian troops a way to shoot down Shahed-type attack drones without spending a multimillion-dollar Patriot interceptor on a target that might have cost Russia only a few tens of thousands of dollars to build.

The U.S. military has taken notice. In August, the Marine Corps signed an $19 million contract for 10 more Tempest vehicles, a lightweight buggy built by V2X that also carries AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire missiles to hunt down drones. At least two Tempest vehicles have already been fighting in Ukraine, where the Ukrainian Air Force credits the system with destroying 21 Shahed drones.

Screengrab from video posted to social media

That combat record made the Tempest an easier sell to the Marine Corps than a system still stuck in testing. Between STASH and Tempest, the same missile the Army is now describing in its new notice, one capable of hitting targets from 500 meters out to several kilometers, has already proven itself doing double duty: killing tanks and killing drones with the same warhead.

The Army’s new notice doesn’t name a specific missile or company, but the requirements closely track the specifications of the AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missile and the AGM-114 Hellfire, both built by Lockheed Martin. JAGM entered service with the Marine Corps in 2022 and was built to replace three older missile types, Hellfire, Maverick and TOW, with one weapon that can guide itself using either a laser or radar. Each JAGM missile costs roughly $319,000, and the Pentagon has said it eventually wants more than 26,000 of them.

Any company that thinks it can meet the Army’s requirement needs to prove it can gear up fast. The Army wants a contractor ready to start full production by the last quarter of fiscal year 2028, and it wants the first 8,000 missiles, plus spare parts, delivered within two years of any contract being signed. After that, the Army wants another 8,000 missiles delivered every year on a repeating cycle.