Watch a Navy P-8 Poseidon put a torpedo in the water and the first thing you notice is how far down the airplane comes. A torpedo dropped from an aircraft normally leaves at around 100 feet over the surface, so the crew ends up flying a 737 airframe low and slow across the exact patch of ocean it is attacking.<\/p>\n
Boeing sold the Navy a partial fix for that four years ago. Naval Air Systems Command now wants the rest of it, and it wants the entire weapon shrunk to the size of a bomb.<\/p>\n
On August 25, NAVAIR posted a request for information on SAM.gov<\/a> for the Silent Anvil Air-Launched Torpedo, or SAA-LT in the paperwork. The Navy’s Strike Weapons Program Office is behind it. Companies have until September 29 to answer.<\/p>\n Here is the idea. A fighter, a patrol plane or a drone carries the weapon on a standard bomb rack and releases it from altitude. Wings pop out, and the thing glides toward the target area under its own guidance. It becomes a torpedo only when it hits the water, at which point an acoustic sensor takes over and it hunts like any other lightweight torpedo.<\/p>\n The RFI sets three hard limits: no more than 268 pounds, no more than 70 inches long, no more than 7.5 inches across. You do not have to squint at those numbers for long. They describe a GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb, which measures 70.8 inches by 7.5, and the notice tells industry to build to roughly that shape and to hang the weapon on the BRU-61\/A rack the SDB already flies on.<\/p>\n Inside the weapon, the Navy wants an acoustic sensor, a warhead, an electric motor and a section that handles command and control. The flying half gets a wing kit, a steering package and a radio with its own antenna. DefenseScoop and Military Times both pulled a template release band of 10,000 to 60,000 feet out of the notice, along with three release speeds: Mach 0.25, Mach 0.50 and Mach 0.85.<\/p>\n One line in the RFI tells you what NAVAIR is really chasing. Silent Anvil should “maximize aerial flight endurance while minimizing aquatic immersion time.” Which means: spend as long as possible in the air, where the weapon is fast and quiet, and as little time as possible in the water, where it is slow and loud enough for a submarine to hear coming.<\/p>\n Boeing already sells the Navy a wing kit that bolts onto a Mk 54 torpedo and turns it into a glider. Everyone calls it HAAWC, short for High Altitude Anti-Submarine Warfare Weapon Capability. The wings came from the SLAM-ER cruise missile and the guidance came from JDAM, so most of the hardware was flying on something else first. The kit hauls the torpedo out to the target area, lets go, and a tail parachute softens the splash. The Navy declared initial operational capability in November 2022, which lets a P-8 crew shoot from near its cruising altitude of roughly 33,000 feet instead of dropping to 100.<\/p>\n So why isn’t that enough?<\/p>\n The Mk 54 is a big object. The Navy’s own fact file for the Mk 54<\/a> lists it at 607 pounds, 106.9 inches long and 12.75 inches across, with a 100-pound warhead and a range of roughly 5.7 miles. Bolt a wing kit to that and you still have a 600-pound weapon that realistically only a P-8 carries. Silent Anvil would come in at 268 pounds against the Mk 54’s 607, and 70 inches against its 106.9. That gets it onto aircraft that could never take a Mk 54 anywhere.<\/p>\n Air Force Special Operations Command declared its MQ-9 Reaper fleet operational with the GBU-39B<\/a> this spring. Air Commandos from the 27th Special Operations Wing loaded one onto a Reaper at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, on March 27, and the Air Force says the bomb glides up to 60 miles from release. Forbes floated the Reaper as the obvious candidate for Silent Anvil, and that reading looks right to me, though the RFI itself never names an airplane.<\/p>\n The carrier requirement is the part I keep coming back to. USNI News reported that the notice asks for a weapon compatible with storage and handling aboard aircraft carriers, and American carrier air wings have had no dedicated fixed-wing submarine hunter since the S-3 Viking retired. That work fell to the SH-60 Seahawk and to the land-based P-8. A torpedo sized for a fighter’s bomb rack would put some of it back on the flight deck.<\/p>\n Timing helps here. DefenseScoop reported on September 1 that the Navy has opened its search for the first increment of carrier-based Collaborative Combat Aircraft, and the Air Force put its own two uncrewed fighters into production in June<\/a>. Those aircraft will need something to carry. A 268-pound anti-submarine weapon fits a drone bay in a way a 607-pound one never will.<\/p>\n Rear Adm. Michael Brookes, who runs the Office of Naval Intelligence, told the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in March<\/a> that up to half of the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s projected 80-boat attack submarine fleet could be nuclear-powered by 2035, and that 20 to 30 new nuclear-powered cruise and ballistic missile boats could be in service by 2040. Brookes also flagged Chinese uncrewed underwater vehicles built for one-way attack, surveillance and mining.<\/p>\n None of that matters unless somebody finds the submarine first, and the gear that does the finding is going through an awkward stretch of its own<\/a>. A glide weapon is only ever as good as the track feeding it. The RFI leans on that problem by requiring the torpedo to plug into military command-and-control tools and accept target updates while it is still in the air, which is the same trick HAAWC uses.<\/p>\n Nobody has been picked to build this, and no design exists yet. The Navy has not put a price on the program, and the RFI does not specify a glide range, because that is one of the things NAVAIR is asking industry to work out. The Navy is offering two paths: a complete torpedo and glide body from one vendor, or just an unpowered wing kit wrapped around a torpedo the government already owns.<\/p>\n The schedule reads like a stretch goal. NAVAIR wants a working prototype demonstrated start to finish inside 18 months of an award, then about 180 complete rounds delivered in the three years after a demo that works. USNI News reported the document also asks industry to hold a production floor of at least 60 a year. To move that quickly, the Navy said it may award through the Naval Aviation Systems Consortium rather than the normal contracting route.<\/p>\nSo what does the Navy actually want built?<\/h2>\n
The Navy has already done half of this<\/h2>\n
A Reaper already flies with something this size<\/h2>\n
China is the stated reason for the hurry<\/h2>\n
It is still only a request for information<\/h2>\n