The Air Force has been upgrading a number of F-16C/D Vipers, including those in the Air National Guard, with Northrop Grumman's AN/APG-83 Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR), which is an active electronically scanned array type, and just awarded that company a new contract to install these on hundreds of additional F-16 aircraft in the USAF's stable. These will allow these aircraft to spot and track targets at greater ranges and with increased precision, especially low flying targets with small radar cross-sections. The Sniper ATP linked to an AESA radar would significantly enhance the ability of the Viper to engage targets with its laser-guided rockets. Fighter jets conducting homeland defense missions already fly with Sniper ATPs for long-range identification of aircraft.

The service did say that the F-16C had targeted the drone using an onboard targeting pod. Pictures show that the plane was carrying an AN/AAQ-33 Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod (ATP) during the test. The Sniper ATP's long-range, gyro-stabilized optics and laser designator can be slaved to an aircraft's radar, but it's unclear if this was the case during this particular experiment.

The Air Force did not say what warhead and fuze combination it used during the test. An inert training warhead might have been enough to turn the rocket into a hit-to-kill air-to-air weapon that would have destroyed the target by physically smashing into it. A high explosive type combined with a proximity fuze would have been another option. Images that the Air Force released show that the aircraft taking part in the test were carrying rockets with yellow bands at the front, which would point to a live warhead.

The Air Force says that using the AGR-20A in the air-to-air role was the result of an effort to develop a low-cost weapon for aircraft to use in the cruise missile defense role. This was the number two proposal, out of 76 in total, to come out of an internal Weapons and Tactics Conference (WEPTAC) in January 2019. At present, the service trains to use AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) and AIM-9X Sidewinders to engage cruise missile threats.

The unit price for the latest AIM-120D variant is just over $1.3 million, according to the Pentagon's budget request for the 2020 Fiscal Year. Older AIM-120Cs still cost around $1.16 million per shot. Each guidance and control section for the AGR-20A, which, as noted, can be used to convert existing Hydra 70 rocket stocks into laser-guided versions, is just around $25,000.

In addition, the Air Force says that the laser-guided rockets are faster to load than AIM-120s. Above all else, these weapons also give the launching aircraft far greater magazine depth since they get loaded into 7- and 19-shot pods on a single station that would hold a single AIM-120.

The threat cruise missiles pose to U.S. forces deployed overseas, as well as to the United States itself, has been a growing concern for years now within the U.S. military, which you can read about in more detail in this past War Zone story. Cruise missile technology is increasingly proliferating, including to non-state militant groups, such as Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, as seen in the video below. The latest U.S. Missile Defense Review, which came out in January 2019, also focused heavily on cruise missile defense. Earlier this year, the U.S. Army also announced it was buying a number of Israeli-made Iron Dome systems ostensibly for this role.