After decades of fighting rogue states and non-state actors, the U.S. military is preparing for conflict with a much more powerful adversary: the People’s Republic of China. This would differ from any of the United States’ recent wars, both in scale and in kind. The U.S. military’s current capabilities would be inadequate. However, some equipment central for the Global War on Terror (GWOT) could remain surprisingly relevant in the Pacific.
Three types of aircraft would struggle to serve their traditional roles in contested airspace, but can be adapted for new ones: medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) drones, subsonic ground-attack planes, and attack helicopters. These are known for striking targets from relatively short distances, and for lacking both speed and stealth. Accordingly, using them against a modern adversary would pose severe risks.
This is why they might seem useless outside of asymmetrical warfare. Despite these drawbacks, they’re fully capable of four important tasks: shooting down Shahed-style drones, sinking speedboat-style sea-drones, launching certain long-range missiles, and finding targets.
Affordable Air Defense
Aircraft often associated with the GWOT can bolster U.S. air defense, which is likely insufficient for countering China.
In an attempted invasion of Taiwan, Beijing would be strongly incentivized to use Shahed-style drones. Many U.S.-aligned military bases and warships in the region would be within range of these weapons from mainland China. While outperformed by decades-old strike missiles, they’re dramatically cheaper and easier to produce, allowing massive salvos to overwhelm air defense.
These drones have proven their merit in combat. Moscow launched over 112,000 of them at Ukraine, surpassing any bombardment that Russian cruise missile production could sustain. Fifteen months of Houthi attacks with Iranian-made Shaheds consumed more of the U.S. Navy’s interceptors than the previous 30 years. The same drones were used for Iran’s two fatal strikes on U.S. soldiers in 2026, which cost seven American lives.
Given that China already helps Russia and Iran build Shahed-style drones for their war efforts, Beijing is highly likely to replicate this if it starts a war in the Pacific. In response, the United States has already prepared a combat-tested countermeasure: a munition known as the AGR-20 FALCO (Fixed wing, Air Launched, Counter-unmanned aircraft systems Ordnance).
The FALCO converts unguided air-to-ground rockets into low-cost substitutes for air-to-air missiles. At roughly one-19th the price of a Sidewinder missile, this rocket is cheaper than the drones it intercepts. Beyond solving the economic issue of traditional missiles, the FALCO allows aircraft to carry several times more munitions. Instead of mounting directly to under-wing pylons, these rockets are stored in multi-shot pods. In turn, any aircraft carrying rocket pods can cheaply destroy dozens of Shahed-style drones without landing to reload.
Maximizing the FALCO’s effectiveness requires well-suited aircraft. Counterintuitively, relying on the United States’ most advanced fighter jets might not be ideal. These need either well-maintained runways or aircraft carriers, which will both be high priority targets for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force. Further, stealth fighters typically cannot carry the FALCO, as rocket pods don’t fit in their internal weapons bays. Lastly, even non-stealth fighters need relatively frequent maintenance and refueling, which affect readiness and operational costs.
Aircraft that played key counterterrorism roles can fill this gap. The FALCO can be mounted on MALE drones, including the MQ-9 Reaper and its potential successor, the Mojave. The same applies to planes like the OA-1K Skyraider II and A-10 Thunderbolt II, also known as the Sky Warden and Warthog, respectively. FALCO rockets are also compatible with attack helicopters, namely the AH-1Z Viper and AH-64 Apache, whose larger 19-shot rocket pods can carry a staggering 76 interceptors.
These depend less on runways or carriers, require less maintenance, and offer greater loiter time than supersonic jets, making them valuable platforms to consider for patrolling Taiwanese airspace. They fall short in survivability, but hunting Shaheds doesn’t necessarily involve flying near the frontline. Ukraine’s use of cropdusters in this role suggests that the tradeoffs can be worthwhile.
Along with the FALCO, these aircraft offer other cost-effective ways to take out Chinese drones. The United States, Israel, and the UAE have all showcased this with the Apache’s 30mm chaingun, which will become even more capable with a new dedicated anti-drone shell now entering mass production.
Theoretically, the A-10’s 30mm cannon could be adapted for similar proximity fuzed munitions, such as the identically-sized shells fired from the SkyRanger 30 air defense system. Guns are also included on Vipers, and can be installed on the Mojave and Sky Warden. Despite their smaller caliber and standard ammunition, guns like these are another counter-drone weapon proven useful by Ukraine, where they’re used on Soviet-era helicopters.
Answering the Rise of Sea Drones
As with Shaheds, China recognizes another weapon’s influence on the Ukraine war: remotely operated kamikaze speedboats, or Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs). These have proven deadly against Russia’s Navy. Their low profile keeps them close to the waves, allowing them to catch warships off guard. They’re also cheap, so munitions shot at them must be as well.
The most proven defense is patrolling from the air. Russian helicopters successfully eliminated many USVs, at least until Ukraine started putting missiles on its sea drones. These missions call for slow speed, sustained flight, and hitting small moving targets. Once again, the United States can leverage aircraft known for the GWOT.
The same rocket modified for the FALCO can also be configured to hit targets on the ground or at sea, instead of air-to-air strikes. Rockets in this configuration have already been tested in combat against a threat comparable to USVs; the U.S. fired them at Iranian speedboats, which are similar in size to sea drones, and sometimes even carry the same types of anti-aircraft missiles that Russia has encountered.
This munition enables all aircraft referenced earlier to destroy USVs from a distance, without compromising precision or cost efficiency. Greater range will keep American pilots safe and prevent the losses faced in Russia’s counter-USV efforts, where helicopters primarily rely on guns.
These aircraft will be even more effective if China refrains from arming its sea drones with missiles, which is entirely plausible, as USVs are meant to be simple and rapidly mass produced. In this scenario, pilots could safely get USVs within range of their cannons. The result would likely mirror that of Iran’s boats struck by inexpensive 30mm shells from Apaches and A-10s.
Sinking Ships From Long Range
Because China is separated from Taiwan by sea and has a navy that outnumbers all others, a war will include many airstrikes targeting ships. These targets cannot be destroyed by the aircraft referenced above, at least not with the munitions used during the GWOT. Only a handful of their bombs and missiles have large enough payloads, and none have enough range to avoid anti-aircraft threats.
Defense contractors are addressing these deficiencies with cruise missiles, which have warheads weighing hundreds of pounds and ranges stretching hundreds of miles. The MQ-9 Reaper is being adapted to use either the LRASM (Long Range Anti-Ship Missile) or an air-launched variant of the NSM (Naval Strike Missile), if not both. Similarly, the Marine Corps is arming Vipers with new Red Wolf anti-ship missiles, which Apaches and Sky Wardens can also deploy.
Using these aircraft for long-range strikes should be viewed as a supplement, not a replacement, for systems purpose-built to fight the PLA Navy. This redundancy offsets certain risks with other anti-ship platforms: unlike land-based missile launchers, they aren’t stationary targets; unlike warships, they aren’t constrained by the United States’ struggling shipbuilding industry; compared to fighter jets, they’re less constrained by the vulnerability of aircraft carriers, nearby runways, or refueling tankers.
Supplementing ISR
Without knowing where to strike, munitions and launch platforms are useless. In modern naval warfare, targets are primarily found with technological sensors through missions called intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). For many ISR aircraft that the U.S. relies on, production ended decades ago.
For example, the RC-135 and U-2 spy planes were both used in practically every conflict since the early Cold War, including this year against Iran, but haven’t been built since the 1960s and 1980s, respectively.
This also applies to planes specialized for tracking aerial threats, which are called AWACS (Airborne Warning And Control Systems). The United States’ largest AWACS plane, the E-3 Sentry, proved its usefulness as recently as Iran, but its last airframe was made in 1992.
The pattern continues for aircraft dedicated to anti-submarine warfare (ASW), which goes hand in hand with ISR. The U.S. military retired its final carrier-based ASW plane in 2016, the S-3 Viking, and now depends on helicopters and runway-based planes with limited operational range.
Counterterrorism aircraft, especially MALE drones, can help. Sophisticated sensors already allow Reapers and Mojaves to fill the gaps left by legacy spy planes. They can also act as “motherships” for several types of smaller, cheaper drones. These can search areas that are too risky for expensive aircraft, and too distant for small drones to reach on their own.
With minimal reconfiguration, drones can also strengthen the U.S. AWACS fleet. Survivability concerns and expected breakthroughs in satellite technology have delayed the adoption of a successor for the E-3. MALE drones don’t have large enough payloads to serve as direct replacements, but an upcoming radar pod could convert them to mini-AWACS aircraft. This is an immediately tangible way to keep aircrews safe, at least as a band-aid solution.
Drones can also search for submarines. Aircraft do this with two systems: various on-board measuring instruments, and floating sensors that are dropped into the water. A compact version of these on-board instruments is marketed specifically for its compatibility with drones, and its performance earned integration on U.S. helicopters. An external pod that drops the floating sensors has already been made specifically for MQ-9s. Accordingly, adapting Reapers and Mojaves for ASW missions should be viable, following precedent from Turkiye, Israel, and China.
While the inherent safety of unmanned platforms makes MALE drones more appealing than other counterterrorism aircraft, these externally mounted ISR systems could likely be altered for ground-attack planes. The Sky Warden and A-10 cannot safely enter contested airspace, but they’re no less survivable than aircraft currently used for AWACS and ASW missions, several of which are modified passenger airliners.
Availability
Reinventing these aircraft for the Pacific is worth exploring because so many are available. The US has hundreds of these drones, hundreds of these planes, and nearly 1,000 of these helicopters in service. Further, nearly all of their production lines are active and likely to stay active. Despite dramatic shifts in priorities since the height of the GWOT, the need to confront asymmetrical threats in some capacity will persist. Non-state adversaries, from cartels to jihadists, are unlikely to disappear, even as U.S. foreign policy increasingly prioritizes China. By extension, production of counterterrorism equipment has no end in sight.
These platforms are also widely used by allies in the Pacific. Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea all operate variants of both the Viper (or its predecessor, the Cobra) and Apache, the latter of which is also flown by Australia. The Philippines recently retired their American attack helicopters, but replaced them with Super Tucano prop-planes highly comparable to the Sky Warden. Lastly, in addition to the Reapers used by Taiwan and Japan, all of these nations have a mix of similar MALE drones. In turn, allied militaries could take advantage of these new uses for old equipment, not just the US.
The availability of these aircraft coincides with shrinking fleets of legacy systems and pending deliveries of next-generation replacements. Along with the ISR platforms referenced earlier, the United States stopped making all of its strategic bombers and its premier air-superiority fighter, and their successors haven’t arrived yet. Super Hornet production lines are also scheduled to end next year, and its replacement might be unable to use LRASM or guided rockets like FALCO.
Counterterrorism aircraft certainly cannot fill all of these roles, but they can fill some. This will free up more versatile systems for other missions. More concretely, fighter jets can handle more types of missions than attack helicopters, but the United States has a finite number of jets, so it should use helicopters whenever possible.
When the U.S. entered the Global War On Terror, its military faced adversaries sharing little with those it had prepared to fight. Eventually, the U.S. military adjusted. Today, the beginning of another Cold War requires an adjustment. Beyond investing in systems purpose-built for countering China, the United States should proactively convert equipment from the last war to better serve its needs in the next one.
