The Pentagon has approved the potential sale of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) cruise missiles to Ukraine at a cost of $825m, which will mainly be funded by Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands.
This is the first major new arms sale by the Trump administration, coming as diplomatic efforts to end the war appear to have stalled, and sets a 30-day countdown for Congress to review the proposed sale.
At least two different models are under discussion, including the Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile (RAACM) - a jet-powered cruise missile manufactured by CoAspire using advanced 3D printing technologies to reduce cost and production time - and the Rusty Dagger from Zone 5 Technologies. Both are being developed as part of the U.S. programme to produce an affordable, mass production cruise missile.
The missile will be in the 250kg class with a top speed of least Mach 0.6, a tandem blast and fragmentation type warhead with penetrating capability and variable fuze settings. With Russian forces using electronic warfare systems to good effect against GPS-assisted guidance packages used on a variety of Ukrainian air and ground-launched munitions, the ERAM’s internal navigation system must be capable of operating in a GPS degraded environment and a terminal accuracy of 10m Circular Error Probable (CEP) even with high interference and degraded GPS.
