U.S. Air Force CAMP Program Seeks Low-Cost Anti-Air Missile Under $500K

The U.S. Air Force is soliciting industry white papers for a new Counter-Air Missile Program, or CAMP. The service wants a missile with a unit price under $500,000 and the ability to build it in the low thousands per year. The presolicitation notice FA865826R0001 from the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Armament Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base asks for ground-launched concepts that can later be adapted into a low-cost air-to-air weapon while staying within that cost ceiling.

Program documents place CAMP inside the Affordable Mass Munitions portfolio and describe the first missile as a ground-launched system with a planned airborne variant. The ground-launched round is set to be treated as a new weapon class within the Enterprise Test Vehicle family, the same low-cost cruise-missile line the Air Force uses as a test and experimentation platform.

Phase 1 of CAMP is planned as a 24-month effort ending with a prototype launcher, a flight-tested missile, and a full product-level technical data package intended for later high-rate production decisions. According to contracting material, the Air Force expects at least one flight test within nine months of contract award to prove basic launch, range, speed, and handling qualities. White papers stay open through December after an initial call on 7 November 2025 and a re-posting in late November and early December on federal contracting feeds.

CAMP cost target production objectives and schedule

The CAMP presolicitation defines “low-cost” as a unit price under $500,000 for a production run of at least 1,000 complete missiles. It sets an expected annual production rate between 1,000 and 3,500 rounds once the design matures, which would put the line in the same general output range as current U.S. air-to-air missile production rather than small experimental batches.

Air Force documents call for a strictly ground-launched interceptor in the first phase. The missile has to fit a modular launcher concept and use components already at high technology and manufacturing readiness levels. Phase 1 is arranged in incremental “capability cycles” that combine design, integration, and test events to catch manufacturability issues early. The Air Force wants Phase 1 to finish with a flyable prototype and a complete technical data package, including drawings, interface descriptions, and configuration baselines suitable for competitive production.

According to officials, the current notice remains a planning call for white papers, not a binding invitation for full proposals. The Air Force keeps the option to run competitive down-select steps as the program moves from concept studies into development contracts.

Industry sources who have reviewed the package say early attention concentrates on designs that reuse existing rocket motors and seekers instead of starting from clean-sheet hardware. That approach is intended to stay inside the nine-month first-flight target and support the requested production rates. Several teams are now refining costed concepts ahead of the December submission deadline.

Modular open architecture design and data rights in CAMP

CAMP must follow the Armament Directorate’s “Modular Weapon M-Series” framework. Program language calls for performance, affordability, modular construction, and ease of production, with subsystems split into sections for seeker, warhead, guidance and control, and propulsion linked through standard interfaces.

The notice specifies open-architecture requirements for fire-control and datalink interfaces so the missile can connect to existing Army and Air Force command systems without unique software for each launcher or aircraft. The same documents call for extensive use of digital models and hardware-in-the-loop testing to support later subsystem integration and regression testing.

The Air Force seeks broad technical data rights for the selected CAMP design. Contract language asks for government purpose rights to the design package and says the weapon should be designed with export in mind, both for technology-release policy and for how controlled components are handled. Officials confirm the ground-launched CAMP interceptor will be catalogued inside the Enterprise Test Vehicle weapons class rather than as a separate family at the start.

According to industry sources, several potential bidders plan to use additive manufacturing for structural parts and airframes, based on experience from low-cost cruise missiles such as RAACM. Their stated goal is simpler production tooling and shorter assembly time. Companies also note the emphasis on documented supply chains and read it as a requirement to rely on widely available materials and established second-tier suppliers instead of unique processes.

Government ownership of key data, together with export-friendly design, supports foreign military sales and multi-vendor production of subassemblies. A CAMP-class missile that can move into allied inventories without heavy redesign gives the program another potential funding stream beyond U.S. orders and eases pressure on domestic stockpiles.

Enterprise Test Vehicle ERAM and other low cost cruise missile links

Under the Enterprise Test Vehicle effort, the Air Force and the Defense Innovation Unit selected several companies to build low-cost, air-launched cruise missiles that serve as test vehicles for seekers and guidance packages. Zone 5 Technologies and Anduril advanced to the current phase, with designs such as Barracuda-500 intended to demonstrate vertical or air launch, autonomous navigation, and accurate terminal guidance at price points well below traditional cruise missiles. Public comments from the Air Force place ETV unit costs a little above $200,000 and describe heavy reliance on commercial manufacturing techniques and modular payload bays.

In the CAMP notice, the service describes the initial ground-launched interceptor as a “new weapon class of Enterprise Test Vehicle,” which formally puts the anti-air missile inside the same family as those low-cost cruise designs. The Extended Range Attack Munition, or ERAM, shares that same roadmap. ERAM is a long-range, low-cost cruise-missile project intended first for Ukraine, based on CoAspire’s Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile (RAACM) and Zone 5’s Rusty Dagger. U.S. government notifications this year cleared the potential sale of up to 3,350 ERAM rounds and related equipment.

Technical material on RAACM highlights a 3D-printed airframe roughly the size of a 500-pound-class bomb, designed around additive manufacturing with minimal tooling. Rusty Dagger is credited in open sources with a range of more than 500 nautical miles and a guidance system that blends inertial navigation, satellite updates, and terrain-matching. Both designs fall under the “affordable mass” label and have moved beyond early prototype work.

Some Ukrainian and European outlets describe CAMP as a follow-on to ERAM in the same Armament Directorate roadmap. In January 2025, according to officials, the Air Force confirmed to one publication that it was studying an anti-air FALCO capability on a future ERAM-derived variant, using the same APKWS-based rocket warheads already carried by fighters. That study shows how the service links low-cost cruise missiles and interceptors in a single design chain.

Then-Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James Slife summed up the logic behind these programs when he said of ETV last year, “These things may not be quite as exquisite, but we can produce them in high volumes at relatively low cost,” adding that a mix of high-volume low-cost munitions with more sophisticated weapons “provide a very difficult problem for our adversaries to defend against.” CAMP applies that logic in the counter-air role, with hardware and production methods carried over from ETV and ERAM.

CAMP compared with AIM 9X AMRAAM counter UAS rockets and future air to air work

Recent coverage that draws on budget documents and contract awards places the AIM-9X Sidewinder at roughly $470,000 per missile and the AIM-120D AMRAAM near $1 million, depending on batch and customer. Maximum annual production rates listed in Air Force budget material are about 2,500 units for AIM-9X and roughly 1,200 for AMRAAM, and industry is ramping to reach those levels after new multi-year orders. A recent AMRAAM award worth about $3.5 billion aims to rebuild U.S. stocks and support more than a dozen allied air forces. Foreign military sales of AIM-9X continue, including a package for Norway approved in 2025.

The Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II laser-guided 70 mm rocket, fielded under the FALCO program on Air Force jets, has become a main anti-drone weapon. Reports from recent operations credit APKWS rockets with close to 40 percent of drone kills in one U.S. campaign, with each guided round costing around $25,000. The guidance kit, priced in open sources at about $15,000–20,000, mates with standard Hydra rocket motors and several warhead types and gives fighters much deeper magazines than AIM-9X or AMRAAM alone.

FALCO-armed fighters and APKWS-based ground systems cover small drones and some cruise-missile profiles, but speed, seeker type, and engagement envelope limit their use against faster and more distant aircraft. CAMP is cast in the contracting notice as a dedicated counter-air weapon, not a general strike missile, and officials expect higher performance than a guided rocket can provide while staying under the defined cost ceiling.

The U.S. Army recently chose AeroVironment’s Freedom Eagle FE-1 as its Next-Generation Counter-UAS missile under the Long-Range Kinetic Interceptor program, through a contract valued at about $96 million. Freedom Eagle grew out of earlier low-cost counter-drone missile work and is presented by the manufacturer as an affordable option against Group 2 and Group 3 drones, with production based in Huntsville and other U.S. locations. That decision brought another non-traditional missile supplier into serial production in this price band.

The Air Force is also pursuing the Low-Cost High-Speed Air-to-Air Missile request for information. The RFI released in May 2025 described two missiles with AIM-120-class form factors, one roughly the size of AMRAAM and one about half that size, both aimed at high-speed, long-range air-to-air roles. The document set a target unit cost at no more than $250,000 per weapon for production runs of at least 1,000 missiles. The AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile remains the main high-end AMRAAM successor, so LCHSAM and CAMP sit as lower-cost additions rather than replacements.

Recent operations helped push the Air Force toward a larger inventory of cheaper interceptors. U.S. forces in and around the Red Sea have fired high-end surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles against Houthi one-way attack drones and cruise missiles, then had to rebuild stocks. Defensive support for Israel against direct Iranian strikes added another spike in interceptor use. Aid to Ukraine, including the planned delivery of thousands of ERAM cruise missiles, also weighs on production capacity and budgets.

Our analysis shows that CAMP, together with ETV, ERAM, FALCO, Freedom Eagle FE-1, and the LCHSAM activity, is intended to give U.S. forces and allies a wider spread of anti-air weapons in the mid-cost range, with enough volume to sustain high-intensity operations and enough performance to deal with drones, cruise missiles, and crewed aircraft without relying only on the most expensive missiles.

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