The U.S. Marine Corps is aiming to acquire a new single “capability” to fill gaps left by the retirement of its AV-8B Harrier jump jets, AH-1Z and UH-1Y helicopters, and legacy F/A-18C/D Hornet fighters. Dubbed the Future Attack Strike (FASt) plan, the current vision is to have the ability to attack targets kinetically and non-kinetically, and to work together with future uncrewed aircraft.
The first public mention of FASt appears to have come in the most recent annual Marine Corps Aviation Plan, released earlier this month. At this early stage, the Expeditionary and Maritime Aviation-Advanced Development Team (XMA-ADT), part of the U.S. Navy’s Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), has been leading the work to refine the FASt plan.
“FASt capability is being developed to provide long range fires and Close Air Support (CAS) to the ground force and to be a Joint Force kill web enabler. FASt continues to evolve through Weapons Integration Risk Reduction (WIRR) trade studies to drive innovation and experimentation,” per the 2026 Marine Aviation Plan. “Conceptual solutions are being analyzed to inform requirements and acquisition pathways. Enhanced capabilities such as kinetic/non-kinetic launched effects, long-range precision fires, advanced survivability, DI [digital interoperability], and EW [electronic warfare] will be further developed.”
“Future Attack Strike (FASt) is a capability being developed to fill a Marine Aviation attack & strike mission gap posed by sundowning F/A-18, AV-8B, AH-1Z, & UH-1Y aircraft, with an initial operating capability being fielded in the mid-2040s,” a Marine Corps spokesperson also told TWZ directly after we reached out for more information. “FASt will employ kinetic and non-kinetic weapons, be capable of Manned Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T), be interoperable with the Joint Force to close long-range kill chains in contested environments, and deliver offensive air support to affect all-domain threats.”
It should be noted here that the previously stated plan for replacing the AV-8B and F/A-18C/D fleets has been the acquisition of a mixture of short takeoff and vertical landing capable F-35B and carrier-based F-35C variants of the stealthy Joint Strike Fighter. We will come back to this later on.
Though not explicitly stated, supplanting the fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters mentioned above with a single platform would require a short, if not vertical takeoff and landing (S/VTOL) capable design. The Marine Corps has said in the past that it is at least monitoring U.S. Special Operations Command’s progress with its High-Speed Vertical Takeoff and Landing (HSVTOL) program. HSTVOL is paired with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (SPRINT) effort.
Last year, DARPA selected Bell over Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences to move to the next phase of SPRINT. The core goal of SPRINT is to demonstrate a concept for a VTOL aircraft that can cruise at speeds between 400 and 450 knots. Bell’s design centers on wingtip proprotors with blades that fold away after the transition from hover to level flight, as you can read more about here.
HSVTOL Sled Transition Test
HSVTOL and SPRINT have both focused heavily on designs capable of transporting cargo and personnel, but Bell says its design concept is scalable. The company has shown renderings of multiple crewed and uncrewed variations, including types that could be configured for missions more in line with FASt.
The Marine Corps could look to other emerging S/VTOL designs for FASt, as well. The possibility of a Marine Corps derivative of Bell’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor, which serves as the basis for the U.S. Army’s new MV-75, has been put forward in the past. The company’s uncrewed V-247 Vigilant tiltrotor was aimed originally at a Marine requirement, as well. FASt could also end up intertwined with a separate Marine Corps plan to replace its MV-22 Osprey tiltrotors, currently called the Next Generation Assault Support (NGAS) platform.
Speed and range, on top of runway independence, will be key considerations for the Marines when it comes to FASt. The service’s current core vision for future conflicts centers on hub-and-spoke-type expeditionary and distributed deployments with forces positioned at far-flung sites across a broad area. Those units are expected to be able to rapidly deploy and redeploy from one operating location to another, which could be within range of enemy standoff strikes, to disrupt an opponent’s targeting cycles and reduce vulnerability. Island-hopping in the Pacific during a high-end fight with China is a principal scenario.
This all has raised questions, in particular, about the future utility of slower, lower-flying, and shorter-ranged helicopters like the AH-1Z and UH-1Y, and, by extension, how to fill the gaps in close air support and other capabilities they provide. The Marine Corps has already slashed the size of its AH-1Z and UH-1Y fleets, but is also taking steps to ensure the continued relevance of the remaining helicopters. This includes the acquisition of a new standoff strike capability for the AH-1Z in the form of L3Harris’ Red Wolf miniature cruise missile. The UH-1Y is regularly used as an electronic warfare platform when paired with the podded Intrepid Tiger II system, and other future roles for those armed utility helicopters are still being explored.
AH-1/UH-1 “investments also inform Future Attack Strike (FASt) capability development, which will help fill critical gaps in Marine Aviation’s future ACE [air combat element of the Marine Air Ground Task Force],” the 2026 Marine Aviation Plan notes.
“Coming back to that interoperability, it’s multiple pathways and multiple waveforms. I don’t think we say kill chains anymore, because it’s not a linkage of nodes, it’s a linkage of webs,” Col. Nathan Marvel, then commander of Marine Aircraft Group 39 (MAG-39) based at Marine Corps Air Station Camp Pendleton in California, told TWZ in an interview back in 2023. “We may very well be an enabler where you’re pushing data through us via voice and or data, and we may very well be the end of that kill web or that kill chain enabler as well. We may tell someone where something is so they can go kill it or we maintain custody, or someone may tell us where something is so we can go kill it like we have traditionally done. Interoperability is a huge focus for us.”
Col. Marvel had outlined a case to us for the continued relevance of the AH-1Z, as well as the UH-1Y, in a future major fight in the Pacific, which you can find here. Much of what he detailed at the time is in line with how the Marine Corps is now talking about FASt.
“We are going to be able to carry a potpourri of weapons. It would not be unheard of to hang some exquisite fixed-wing fighter weapons on the wing-stub of a Cobra and bring that to a fight,” Marvel also told us last year. “It may be a loitering weapon or maybe an exquisite pod that does only certain things that we’re used to seeing on fixed-wing aircraft and bring that to the fight and put that down at the rotor wing level to enable the battlespace commander and the maneuver element commander to do things that they may or may not have thought they could do before. So that’s kind of where we are with capabilities buildup.”
The expectation that FASt will fill gaps left by the retirement of the AV-8B and the F/A-18C/D may also point to new interest in a future high-low capability mix. As mentioned, the Marine’s primary plan has been to replace both of these types with variants of the F-35, and this looks to still be the case, at least in part. However, FASt could offer a valuable lower-tier companion to the F-35s, which are highly capable, but also very expensive and complicated to operate and maintain, especially in more austere locales. Just in general, the Marines have many day-to-day tactical aviation requirements that do not demand a very costly high-end fighter, as well. TWZ has highlighted the value of high-low mixes in the context of future U.S. Air Force tactical force structure plans on several occasions in the past.
F-35B
With the explicit mention of MUM-T capabilities for FASt, that platform also looks set to benefit from Marine efforts now to acquire fleets of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) type drones. The first Marine CCAs will be variants of Kratos’ stealthy XQ-58 Valkryie configured for operations from traditional runways, as well as at least runway-independent launches, as you can learn more about here.
The service is also looking at future ‘spiral’ development cycles that could result in purchases of different uncrewed aircraft designs. The Corps just recently announced plans to use General Atomics’ YFQ-42A, one of two drones now in development under the first phase of the U.S. Air Force’s CCA program, as at least a surrogate for future uncrewed tactical aviation capabilities.
It is possible that FASt could turn out to be a family of systems that itself includes uncrewed capabilities in the end, as well. Shield AI has notably been describing its runway-independent X-BAT stealthy jet-powered ‘autonomous fighter,’ which TWZ was first to report on last October, in terms that could be of interest to the Marines for this emerging requirement.
X-BAT: Earth Is Our Runway
All this being said, the 2040s timeline outlined for FASt now means that this platform, however it might evolve, will not be an immediate replacement for the AV-8s or the F/A-18C/Ds. Marine Harriers are set to fly their last sorties in June of this year. The service’s goal now is for the legacy Hornets to be retired around the end of the decade. The AH-1Zs and UH-1Ys are currently expected to serve into the 2040s.
Regardless, the vision the Marines have laid out for FASt points to a very different-looking tactical aviation ecosystem now on the service’s horizon.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com