Despite the best efforts no western made weapon has so far been able to give Ukraine an edge on the battlefield.
The search for wonder weapons to help Ukraine win the NATO proxy-war against Russia thus continues.
On August 20 the Wall Street Journal reported of a new type of weapon to enter this never ending story.
Hidden down in a piece which discussed how the Pentagon Has Quietly Blocked Ukraine’s Long-Range Missile Strikes on Russia (archived) one could find these remarkable paragraphs:
The administration this past week approved the sale of 3,350 Extended Range Attack Munition air-launched missiles, or ERAMs, which are set to arrive in Ukraine in about six weeks, two U.S. officials said. The $850 million arms package, mostly funded by European nations and which includes other items, was delayed until after Trump’s summits with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Several U.S. officials said use of the ERAM, with a range between 150-280 miles, would require Ukraine to seek approval from the Pentagon. The State Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.
At that point there was little known about that type of weapon.
The official announcement by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) of such a weapon delivery was published only yesterday:
The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of Ukraine of Air Delivered Munitions and related equipment for an estimated cost of $825 million. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress.
The Government of Ukraine has requested to buy up to three thousand three hundred fifty (3,350) Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) missiles and three thousand three hundred fifty (3,350) Embedded Global Positioning System (GPS)/Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) (EGI) with Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module (SAASM), Y-Code, or M-Code.
…
Ukraine will use funding from Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway and Foreign Military Financing from the United States for this purchase. The ERAM is an example of working together with our NATO allies to develop a capable and scalable system capable of being delivered on a fast timeline.The principal contractors will be Zone 5 Technologies and CoAspire. …
Looking further into this I found that the 'new' weapon system is made from a 'dumb' MK-82 500 pound bomb with a "bolt-on" guidance package which together are know as GBU-38. Attached to the GBU-38 will now be a turbo jet engine which will give the weapon a longer range.
The idea for this contraption was revealed in July 2024 when the US Air Force issued a Request for Proposal (RFP):
This new Extended Range Attack Munition (ERAM) will likely be a 500-pound class weapon with blast, fragmentation, and limited penetration effects; variable fuze options; a range of at least 250 nautical miles (463 km); and a speed of at least 0.6 Mach.
The two companies who have been selected to develop and make such vehicles are not the most experienced ones.
Zone 5 Technologies has developed a kind of toolbox to create new missiles:
Open Weapon Platform (OWP) represents an ecosystem of flight proven flight software and hardware, digital engineering and model-based design environments, and associated simulation and analysis tools.
OWP allows for the rapid integration of new weapons, provides defined pathways for integration of 3rd party capabilities, and builds the necessary foundation to enable true capability re-use across weapon and uncrewed platforms.
This toolbox was used to work on an:
Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) program, which was originally envisioned to field an affordable testbed for subsystems and is now poised to serve as a foundation for a new weapon.
In March it announced:
A parallel effort called Extended Range Attack Munition has been formed to develop an ETV vehicle for foreign military sales, primarily to aid Ukraine — though military assistance for Kyiv has now been paused.
Nothing but some experimental vehicles produced by Zone 5 Technology seem to have flown so far.
CoAspire, the other company contracted for building the missile, has progressed a bit further. By March it had a prototype flying:
CoAspire is the prime contractor for the Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile (RAACM). CoAspire’s goal is to disrupt the cruise missile market and provide customers with an affordable and capable cruise missile at a fraction of the cost of other air-launched cruise missiles. RAACM has successfully flown in tests, most recently in March 2025 launched from a fighter aircraft.
RAACM is an additively manufactured (3D printed) cruise missile the same physical size of the 500 lb. class MK-82 or GBU-38 bomb. By designing it for additive manufacturing, it requires no tooling during assembly, greatly reducing touch labor and cost.
RAACM has a wing, a turbojet engine, warhead and guidance package that accurately guides the RAACM to a target. RAACM can be integrated on any aircraft capable of carrying a GBU-38.
From what I can gather both companies selected by the DCSA to deliver Extended Range Attack Munition have yet to fly a final product.
There is also the tiny problem that these weapons will be air-launched. Ukraine's airforce is down to maybe two handful of jets that will be able to launch them. Russian air defenses can shoot down jets in Ukraine even when these are flying a 100 miles away from Russia's border. The effective reach of the new cruise missiles into Russia will thus be much less than advertised. At a speed of Mach 0.6 the missiles are slow and do not pose a problem for any Russian air defense system.
The above facts explain why news of these 'new' missiles has not created a buzz in Russian military circles.
The whole idea of these weapons reminds of an earlier wonder weapon attempt by Boeing that used the smaller 250 pound MK-81/GBU-38 combo in a ground launched missile:
The Ground Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB) is a weapon developed by Boeing and the Saab Group to allow Boeing's GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb (SDB), originally developed for use by aircraft, to be ground-launched from a variety of launchers and configurations. It combines the SDB with the M26 rocket, enabling it to be launched from ground-based missile systems such as the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System and M142 HIMARS.
The weapon started initial mass production in 2023 and saw its first combat deployment by Ukraine in 2024 during the Russian invasion of the country. The performance was reportedly disappointing due to Russia's electromagnetic warfare capabilities, along with deficiencies in tactics, techniques, and procedures.
To summarize:
- As far as we can gather the new ERAM cruise missile has yet to fly.
- The two companies involved in making it are not known for mass production:
- Zone-5 has yet to build more than a prototype.
- CoAspire has 3D-printed its version of the missile but that process is inefficient for fast mass production.
- At $250,000 a piece these missiles ain't cheap.
- The effective range, when fired from outside of Russian air defenses zone, will probably be less than 100 miles beyond Russia's border.
- The missiles are not stealthy but slow and pose no problem for Russian air defenses.
On top of that the missile will, at least in part and despite Trump's claims of not paying for more weapons, be funded out of the U.S. Foreign Military Financing budget.
To fire it Ukraine will have to seek Pentagon approval which currently is not a given.
Given all that is known I highly doubt the WSJ claim that 3,350 ERAM are "set to arrive in Ukraine in about six weeks."
My guess is that no more than a handful ERAMs have been build so far. They will likely be as ineffective as the previously delivered, Boeing produced GLSDB weapons.
The announcement of these weapons has likely more to do with calming down warmongers in Congress than with giving Ukraine something which would enable it to get an advantage.