Rapid Dragon is a palletized and disposable weapons module which is airdropped in order to deploy flying munitions, typically cruise missiles, from unmodified cargo planes. Developed by the United States Air Force and Lockheed, the airdrop-rigged pallets, called “deployment boxes,” provide a low cost method allowing unmodified cargo planes, such as C-130 or C-17 aircraft, to be temporarily repurposed as standoff bombers capable of mass launching any variant of long or short range AGM-158 JASSM cruise missiles against land or naval targets.
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Similar concepts for parachuting pallets from cargo aircraft to launch rockets have independently been proposed in the civilian aerospace sector by a cross-industrial team sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in 2011 at the 25th AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites to facilitate the deployment of satellites weighing 100-200 kilograms to Low Earth orbit without the need for a dedicated spaceport.[16] Follow-up design research was published in 2013 and 2015 at the 27th and 29th AIAA/USU Conferences on Small Satellites respectively. These design proposals have also been preceded and paralleled with other related Air-launch-to-orbit concepts that launch spacecraft deployed either from cargo ramps or external mounts.
Could the An-26 or An-70 launch Tomahawks this way I wonder?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Air_Force
Rapid Dragon will be a game-changing concept for conventional and, possibly, nuclear weapons use, now for the United States and its allies, but in the future for potential US adversaries. The Rapid Dragon development is somewhat reminiscent of England’s introduction of the Dreadnaught, a type of battleship that made the rest of its large fleet obsolescent and allowed other nations to compete with England in building modern battleships. Rapid Dragon appears to be a similarly game-changing development for the United States and its allies but will need to be carefully monitored to ensure that the advantage it creates is maintained. Similarly, the nuclear potential for Rapid Dragon-like systems will need to be tracked, arms limitation strategies for such systems developed, and the potential increase in threat potentials and/or new threat vectors defined as counterstrategies are conceived.
Video of Rapid Dragon live fire test in Norway 2022
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EPBVWkZxz-w&pp=ygUSYWZzb2MgcmFwaWQgZHJhZ29u
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T1adrIckr6M&pp=ygUSYWZzb2MgcmFwaWQgZHJhZ29u
edit it looks like the platform can be scaled all the way down to being launched from a Wily Coyote
edit 2 as far as interest in this kind of technology for launching satellites for communications/military satellite systems see this article for the rationale of why this technology might be of so much interest to Ukraine, since Ukraine certainly knows Russia could conceivably strike Ukraine back with such sophisticated operations. Launching orbital sattelites from cargo planes seems like a much more resilient, non-static method for Ukraine achieving space capability rather than building ground based space launch facilities.
Lastly, Operation Spiderweb demonstrated Ukraine’s ability to destroy strategic assets deep inside Russian territory. Russia’s ground-based space infrastructure could be similarly targeted. Ukraine’s allies have been squeamish about Ukraine attacking targets inside Russia, but U.S. President Donald Trump was reportedly a fan of Spiderweb, so why not?
Sabotage or cyberattacks could also be used to delay or prevent Russia’s space modernisation.
https://kyivindependent.com/dont-give-russia-space/
edit 3 specific description of broad utility and direct use of already trained air lift/air drop personnel
“that’s just one aspect of palletized effects. So imagine, you know, not only can we service a target [with a lethal weapon], but we could deploy a decoy, we could put out a jamming sensor, we could put out a sensor that could find a radio and provide search and rescue. You know, all those things I think are on the table. When I talk about Rapid Dragon and when I talk about palletized effects, it’s much broader than just the kinetic side of the business,” he added.
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“Imagine where … you drop 100 UAVs. So, you know, little drones. A drone could come out and it could provide precision navigation and timing to someone that doesn’t have it. It could fly a life vest down to a downed pilot or a radio to a downed pilot. It could actually fly down and survey the runway which you’re about to land on … It could provide some sort of, you know, search mechanism for an enemy force if you want it. Or it could simply fly down and go to sleep and be there available for when you want to wake it up,” he told reporters.
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Major modifications to aircraft shouldn’t be necessary to deliver so-called palletized effects, he said, meaning it shouldn’t be expensive.
“I shouldn’t have a whole lot of concern about what comes off the pallet once it goes out of the airplane, I just need to make sure my crews are trained to get it out of the airplane safely and precisely for the operational maneuver being done, and then move forward,” he added.
I think it’s the latter. I suspect tomahawk’s software assumes they are being initially fired in roughly the ‘up’ direction (see every iteration so far of anything that fires a tomahawk). This would present issues when deployed as part of rapid dragon, which dumps missiles in roughly the ‘down’ direction when leaving the pallet. There is no technical reason this cannot be accounted for in the software, I simply suspect it hasn’t been. Modifying and testing the software would take time.
Since they are already fired out of a VLS cell, something that is purposefully modular and unconcerned to what it is attached to, we have lots of great ground-based options. All you really need to do is get the VLS cell roughly vertical and you are good to go.