Former Air Force pilot Mark Gunzinger and Bryan Clark of the Center of Strategic and Budgetary Assessment wrote in a 2015 report, “96% of all American Precision Guided Munitions (PGM) are direct attack weapons with ranges under 50 nm.” If long range standoff cruise missiles exist, such as the 540mn AGM-158 JASSM (Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile) they are more expensive and can have difficulty engaging hardened or mobile targets. Even if next-gen F-35 could “use their stealth to penetrate the air defense bubble, they would probably not have the range to engage high value targets inland,” and “due to payload limitations and their inability to loiter because of fuel constraints and the air defense threat, they would also struggle to engage highly mobile targets.” An Air Force official contacted by Aviation Week’s Pentagon correspondent Lara Seligman states that pilots tank typically two or three times on a 6hr mission.
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