On Aug. 22, the U.S. Navy pulled the cover off a new missile called AIM-424 Malice, built by Raytheon Technologies Corporation (RTX) to extend the reach of American fighters. Two days later, Bloomberg reported that China had built its own version of that reach.
Chinese hypersonic glide vehicles can now fire air-to-air weapons at aircraft thousands of miles from any front line.
Nobody planned that timing, but together the two stories explain why RTX and Lockheed Martin (LMT), the F-35 manufacturer, keep turning up as the default answer to the same question: Which company builds weapons with the longest reach?
Two missile stories collided in one week
The Malice, unveiled at the Navy’s Tailhook Symposium in Reno, can strike targets more than 250 nautical miles away and fits inside the internal weapons bay of an F-35, according to Naval News.
It effectively restores a range advantage American carrier aviation lost when the Navy retired the AIM-54 Phoenix in 2006.
Bloomberg said China has developed hypersonic glide vehicles capable of striking aircraft far behind the front line, citing a person familiar with the program.
Beijing has also added air-to-air functions to some hypersonic cruise missiles and equipped others to strike ships. No other country is known to operate a hypersonic glide vehicle built to carry air-to-air missiles.
China’s ballistic missile inventory has grown 147% since 2015, and its stock of ground-launched cruise missiles has risen 50% over the same period, according to Pentagon estimates cited by Bloomberg.
The Pentagon counted more than 3,150 Chinese ballistic missiles in 2024, a stockpile now taking on new jobs rather than simply growing in size.
Chris McLoughlin / Getty Images
China’s new missiles threaten support aircraft
The targets at risk are not fighter jets. They are the tankers, airborne radar planes, and flying command centers, such as the Air Force’s E-4B Nightwatch, that normally operate far from danger while supporting a combat mission.
A missile traveling that distance can take 20 minutes or longer to arrive. China would also need to track a moving aircraft continuously through a chain of sensors and data links to hit it, and launching a ballistic missile risks being mistaken for the opening move of a nuclear attack.
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That tension is exactly why the story matters more as a spending signal than as a battlefield certainty.
The Pentagon does not need China to fire the weapon to justify buying more range of its own. It only needs the capability to exist.
RTX and Lockheed become the default trade
RTX, whose Raytheon business builds the Malice along with the AIM-174B, an air-launched version of the Navy’s SM-6 interceptor, trades near $209 a share.
Lockheed Martin, which builds the still-developing AIM-260 successor to the long-serving AMRAAM missile, trades near $564. The military has already put roughly $1 billion behind AIM-260 production, though the missile’s range remains classified, Bloomberg noted.
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That answer already shows up in recent contracts. RTX won a $22.9 billion, seven-year Navy deal on Aug. 17 to lift Tomahawk cruise missile output from about 60 missiles a year to more than 1,000, according to the company.
Lockheed Martin holds a $58.6 billion Patriot interceptor agreement running through 2032 and a separate award to quadruple production of the THAAD interceptor, Defense News reported.
Wall Street has priced in some of that momentum, though perhaps not all of it. Based on a MarketBeat consensus, 21 Wall Street analysts currently covering RTX have assigned the stock a “Moderate Buy” rating.
These analysts have established an average price target of $228.59, which points to a 9.26% upside from the recent $209.22 trading level.
Meanwhile, a MarketBeat consensus for Lockheed Martin shows 20 Wall Street analysts maintaining a “Hold” rating with an average price target of $632.39, implying a 12.20% upside from its recent $563.65 trading level.
Production capacity is the real risk to track
The bigger constraint is not political will. The Pentagon’s fiscal 2027 budget request raised missile procurement funding by 188%, a jump that already outstrips what the defense industrial base can produce today, according to Breaking Defense.
Both RTX and Lockheed Martin have responded by locking in seven-year contracts instead of one-year orders, a sign that Washington expects this buildup to last well beyond any single headline about China.
China’s hypersonic reach is a symptom of a broader arms race that has already reshaped how the Pentagon buys weapons, not just what it buys.
The next test for RTX and Lockheed Martin will not be whether the government wants more range.
It will be whether either company can staff, supply, and build fast enough to deliver, and that answer will show up in earnings reports long before it shows up in any missile test.
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