The U.S. Air Force is looking into conducting experiments involving palletized dispensers for stand-off munitions that could rapidly turn airlifters, such as the C-130 Hercules or the C-17 Globemaster III, into heavily armed weapons trucks. This could offer a relatively low-cost and low-risk path toward increasing the service's capacity to launch large scale strikes across a broad area during a major conflict. The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) first announced it was interested in gathering information on existing palletized munition concepts or proposed for new designs in February 2020. AFRL's Air Force Strategic Development Planning and Experimentation Office, or SDPE, said it was looking for information on "potential availability ... [of] systems suitable to support prototype experimentation" in both "ground and flight tests."

"The ability to mass firepower in future conflicts increases the range of OPLAN execution options against peer adversaries. Delivering standoff type weapons in mass, from non-traditional delivery platforms, is one potential option to deliver mass firepower and could prove pivotal in future conflicts," SPDE's February request for information explained. "The concept of 'a bomb bay in a box,' where mobility aircraft air drop multiple, independent munitions from outside of a threat area could augment traditional delivery methods." The contracting notice does not specify a particular type of aircraft, but does say the "concept seeks to capitalize on current airlift capability to increase delivery of massed firepower." Proposed designs also have to employ a "roll-on-roll-off deployment design (i.e. palletized options)" and use "use conventional airdrop infrastructure/techniques" indicating that munitions would exit the aircraft via a rear ramp. The Air Force's primarily airlifters at present are the C-130 and the C-17, both of which have a rear ramp and would ideal candidates to carry such a system. Any system that works on both of those aircraft would also be able to be utilized in conjunction with the larger C-5 Galaxy, if desired, as well.

USAF An airman loads pallets of bombs onto a C-17 for transport. AFRL's palletized munitions system envisions a way for airlifters to actually be able to employ large numbers of stand-off munitions.

AFRL says that the palletized munition system will be expendable, meaning crews will toss out them out of an airplane along with the munitions themselves with no expectation of recovering them after the mission. Anyone who proposes a system can use standardized government cargo pallets as a baseline or develop a new pallet system with the understanding that the U.S. government would eventually own that design if the project leads to an actual fielded weapon system. Any proposed system would "minimize connections between aircraft and pallet" and "require no aircraft modifications," according to the request for information. AFRL also wants the complete system to include a mission separate pallet with the systems necessary to program munitions and enter targeting information before launch. All of this would allow for a palletized munition system that could be readily installed and uninstalled on any suitable airlifter, as necessary. AFRL says responses to its request for information need to include a description of the munition or munitions the proposed system will work with. The contracting notice indicates that companies can also propose entirely new munitions specifically for the palletized system if they want. Whatever the chosen munitions might be, they would have to have sufficient range to allow airlifters to safely launch them from well outside the range of potential hostile air defenses, which are only improving in capability.

USAF A list of characteristics AFRL wants any proposed palletized munitions system to have.

USAF An MC-130E Combat Talon special operations transport drops a 15,000-pound BLU-82/B Daisy Cutter bomb during an exercise. The BLU-82/B is the kind of outsized munition that airlifters have been used to employ in the past.

There have also been more extensive conversion programs to turn cargo aircraft into more specialized strike platforms, the best example of which are the Air Force's AC-130 gunships. There also roll-on/roll-off kits, such as the U.S. Marine Corps' Harvest HAWK system for its KC-130s, which allow militaries to more rapidly and only temporarily convert airlifters into similar, if less robust gunship configurations. Those systems are still generally intended for use in permissive environments, as well. What the Air Force is exploring now is a significantly different concept that would allow airlifters to augment its long-range, stand-off strike capabilities in a high-end conflict. This makes good sense in many respects given the increasing capabilities of potential enemy integrated air defense networks, such as those that Russia and China, continue to improve and expand, which will pose a serious threat to all but the most advanced stealthy aircraft in the future. With that in mind, the question increasingly becomes what would be the functional difference between conducting mass long-range strikes using a large payload bomber, such as the B-52, for instance, rather than an airlifter, such as the C-17, which is significantly cheaper per flight hour to operate and can possibly carry even more weapons using a palletized system? An airlifter carrying the palletized munition system would not need to have any targeting capability of its own, either, instead using ever-improving networking capabilities to get that information from other manned and unmanned aircraft, ships, and assets on the ground closer to the target area. Space-based sensors could also potentially contribute to the targeting ecosystem in the future.

USAF A B-52 bomber carrying a load of precision-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) under its wings.