Op. Midnight Hammer의 교훈; 공중급유능력 보강, 다양한 스탠드오프 탄약 보충 필요

[위종민]

Op. Midnight Hammer 등 장거리 타격 작전엔 공중급유능력 보강이 필요하고, 작전 기간 14발이 투하된 GBU-57 MOP 등 스탠드오프 탄약의 필요성이 부각됐습니다. 특히 사거리 40마일의 SDB II와 사거리 500마일의 JASSM 사이의 중간급 유도폭탄이 없다는 문제가 지적됐네요. 

[행위자–행동–의도 정리]

| 행위자             | 한 행동                         | 표면적 명분/설명        | 기사에 드러난 효과 또는 의미         |
| --------------- | ---------------------------- | ---------------- | ------------------------ |
| 미 공군 지도부        | 미드나이트 해머 작전을 작전 준비태세의 사례로 평가 | 장거리 타격 준비태세 입증   | 장기 캠페인 시 한계와 과제 부각       |
| 미 공군            | 미드나이트 해머 작전 수행               | 장거리 정밀 타격        | 대규모 공중급유 및 항공기 운용 필요성 확인 |
| 미 공군            | 앱솔루트 리졸브 작전 참여               | 베네수엘라 전직 대통령 체포  | 복합 항공전력 운용 사례 제시         |
| 스콧 L. 플루스 중장    | 작전들을 준비태세의 정의라고 발언           | 미 공군의 독자적 역량 강조  | 준비태세 평가 발언               |
| 미 공군            | 폭격기 전력 도입 계획 축소              | 냉전 종료 이후 계획 조정   | 전력 규모 감소 언급              |
| 제이슨 R. 아마고스트 중장 | 급유기 전력 중요성 강조                | 지속적 폭격 캠페인 수행 필요 | 급유기 부족 우려 제기             |
| 미 공군            | KC-46 급유기 지속 구매 결정           | 급유 전력 유지         | 급유 전력 현대화 언급             |
| 미 공군            | 차세대 공중급유체계 검토                | 미래 전력 확보         | 무인 급유체계 가능성 제시           |
| 보잉              | MQ-25 스팅레이 개발                | 해군용 무인 급유기       | 공군 요구에는 부족함 언급           |
| 클레어 랜돌프 소령      | 급유기 부족 우려 표명                 | 작전 제한 요인 지적      | 급유기 최우선 조달 필요성 제기        |
| 미 공군            | GBU-57 투하                    | 지하 깊은 표적 파괴      | 탄약 수량 및 유연성 문제 제기        |
| 미 공군            | 스탠드오프 무기 부족 문제 인식            | 이동 표적 대응 필요      | 무장 선택지 한계 지적             |
| 제이슨 R. 아마고스트 중장 | 다양한 탄약 보유 필요성 발언             | 억제력 강화           | 침투·스탠드오프 결합의 중요성 강조      |

2020년 6월 18일, 미주리주 화이트먼 공군기지 소속 제509폭격비행단의 B-2 스피릿 한 대가 영국 RAF 밀든홀에 배치된 제100공중급유비행단 소속 KC-135 스트래토탱커로부터 공중급유를 받은 뒤 이륙하고 있다. 이 공중급유는 북극권 북쪽에서 수행된 전략폭격기 임무의 일환으로 실시됐다. 미 공군 사진, 일등병 조지프 배런 촬영.

미 공군 지도부는 미드나이트 해머와 같은 최근의 타격 임무를 작전 준비태세의 빛나는 사례로 평가하고 있지만, 이러한 성공은 미 공군이 장기간의 장거리 타격 캠페인을 수행해야 할 경우 직면하게 될 과제 또한 부각시킨다.

미드나이트 해머 작전에는 B-2 스피릿 폭격기를 포함해 다수의 공중급유기, F-35 라이트닝 II, F-22 랩터, F-15, F-16 파이팅 팰컨 등 총 125대의 항공기가 투입됐다. 불과 6개월 뒤에는 미 공군의 B-1B 랜서 폭격기, F-35, F-22, 급유기 및 기타 항공기들이 앱솔루트 리졸브 작전에 참가해 베네수엘라 전 대통령 니콜라스 마두로와 그의 아내를 성공적으로 체포했다.

미 공군 참모국장인 스콧 L. 플루스 중장은 1월 29일 미첼 항공우주연구소가 주최한 공군력 포럼에서 “미드나이트 해머 작전, 앱솔루트 리졸브 작전—이것이 바로 준비태세의 정의”라며 “미국 공군은 어떤 다른 국가도 할 수 없는 일들을 수행한다”고 말했다.

이러한 작전들의 교훈은 향후 수년간 투자, 훈련, 계획 결정에 영향을 미치며, 항공기와 탄약 소요, 전력 규모 결정 등에 반영될 것이다. 미 공군은 한때 B-2 폭격기 100대와 B-1 폭격기 약 400대를 도입할 계획이었지만, 냉전이 끝나면서 이러한 계획은 크게 축소됐다.

미 전략사령부 예하 공군 글로벌타격사령부 부사령관이자 전략공군 부사령관인 제이슨 R. 아마고스트 중장은 이러한 요구 사항이 현재 100대로 설정된 B-21 레이더 도입 대수를 넘어서는 문제라고 말했다. 그는 일부에서 이를 두 배까지 늘려야 한다고 주장하고 있다고 덧붙였다. 그는 또한 지속적인 폭격 캠페인을 수행하는 데 있어 공중급유기 전력의 중요성도 결코 작지 않다고 말했다.

아마고스트는 “미드나이트 해머와 같은 작전이 구체화되기 시작할 때 내가 가장 먼저 걱정하는 것은 급유 전력이 어떤 상태인지, 어디에 배치돼 있는지, 그리고 이를 실제로 수행하기 위해 전 세계에서 어떻게 태세를 갖출 것인가 하는 점”이라며 “이는 결코 쉬운 일이 아니다”라고 말했다.

미드나이트 해머 작전에서 36시간에 걸친 왕복 폭격기 항로는 미주리주 화이트먼 공군기지에서 출발한 B-2 폭격기 7대를 이란까지 보내고 다시 복귀시키는 것으로, 총 비행거리는 1만2,000해리를 넘었다. 이를 위해 목표로 향하는 경로와 귀환 경로 전반에 걸쳐 핵심 지점마다 항공기를 배치하는 대규모 공중급유망이 필요했다. 현재 미 공군의 급유기 전력은 약 500대로, 이 중 약 375대는 평균 기령이 63년을 넘는 KC-135 스트래토탱커다.

중부공군사령부 무기·전술 담당 책임자이자 해당 작전 기획자 중 한 명인 클레어 랜돌프 소령은 이것이 자신과 같은 기획자들에게 큰 우려 사항이라고 말했다.

그녀는 “나는 급유기 문제를 정말 많이 걱정한다”며 “급유기는 매력적이지도 않고, 무기도 아니며, 전투기도 폭격기도 아니기 때문에 이런 논의에서 종종 완전히 배제된다”고 말했다.

이로 인해 랜돌프는 작전의 심각한 제한 요인에 대해 “매우 우려하고 있다”고 밝혔다. 그녀는 “만약 내가 조달 요청 목록을 작성한다면, 아마도 처음 100개 항목은 모두 급유기일 것”이라고 말했다.

미 공군은 KC-46 급유기를 계속 도입하고 있으며, 지난해 7월에는 페가수스와 미래 급유기 사이의 이른바 ‘브리지 급유기’에 대한 경쟁을 포기하고 KC-46을 추가로 구매하기로 결정했다. 또한 전면적으로 새로운 역량을 염두에 두고, 잠재적으로 무인화될 수 있는 차세대 공중급유체계에 대해 산업계의 제안을 모색하고 있다.

해군을 위해 개발된 보잉의 무인 급유기 MQ-25 스팅레이는 현재 지상 주행 시험을 진행 중이며, 향후 공군 역량의 길을 열 수 있다. 그러나 MQ-25의 크기, 탑재 능력, 항속거리, 속도는 미 공군의 요구 수준에 크게 못 미치며, 미 공군 요구에 맞추기 위해서는 대폭적인 확장이 필요하다.

탄약 유연성

탄약 문제는 미드나이트 해머와 같은 작전에서 드러난 또 다른 과제다. 랜돌프는 향후 작전에서 더 깊이 묻힌 시설을 파괴하기 위해 더 깊이 침투할 수 있는 탄약이 필요할 가능성이 크다고 말했다.

미드나이트 해머 작전에서 B-2 폭격기 7대는 세계 최대의 공중 투하 폭탄인 GBU-57 대형관통폭탄 14발을 투하했다. 이른바 ‘MOP’는 5,740파운드의 탄두를 강철 외피로 감싸고, 지하 약 200피트에서 폭발하도록 신관이 설계돼 있다. 이 무기는 특정 용도를 위해 제작·설계됐지만, 북한과 다른 잠재적 적대국들이 보호 수단으로 시설을 지하 깊숙이 건설해 왔다는 점은 오래전부터 알려져 있다. 정확한 구매 수량은 공개된 적이 없지만, 공개 기록에 따르면 구매 수량은 20발에 불과했을 가능성도 있다.

랜돌프는 “단단하고 깊이 매설된 표적을 위한 탄약은 핵심적”이라며 “적들이 우리의 작전에서 무언가를 배우고 있다면, 더 많은 것들을 지하로 옮기고 있다는 점일 것이고, 지구는 관통하기 매우 어려운 대상”이라고 말했다.

지상에서 이동하는 표적과 고정 표적을 파괴하기 위한 스탠드오프 무기에 대한 더 많은 선택지도 필요하다. B-2는 초기 설계 당시 최대 80발의 500파운드 합동직격탄(JDAM)을 탑재할 수 있도록 구성됐는데, 2006년에 초기 운용능력을 확보한 GBU-39 소형직경폭탄(SDB) I형을 최대 240발까지 탑재하는 개념은 당시에는 고려되지 않았다고 아마고스트는 말했다.

그는 “당시에는 80개의 표적을 넘어 더 많은 것을 왜 필요로 하겠느냐는 발상이 없었다”며 “하지만 이제 240발의 SDB로 무엇을 할 수 있는지까지 생각해 보면, 이는 미래 체계에 실제로 설계에 반영되고 있는 개념으로 이어진다. 즉, 플랫폼에 맞게 형상과 규격이 최적화된 더 작고 모듈화된 능력으로, 침투형 플랫폼과 범용 무기 또는 소형 무기를 조합해 스탠드오프 비행의 물리적 한계만으로는 할 수 없는 다양한 임무를 수행할 수 있다는 것”이라고 말했다.

스탠드오프 탄약으로 이동하는 지상 표적을 공격하는 것은 더 어려운데, 이러한 무기들은 자체 추진력으로 더 먼 거리를 이동해야 하기 때문이다. 랜돌프는 JDAM과 AGM-158 합동공대지 스탠드오프 미사일(JASSM) 사이에 선택지가 거의 없다고 말했다. JDAM의 최대 사거리는 약 40마일이고, 이동 표적 공격을 위해 개발된 최신형 SDB II, 즉 GBU-53 스톰브레이커의 사거리는 46마일인 반면, JASSM은 500마일 이상 떨어진 표적을 공격할 수 있다.

랜돌프는 “그 사이를 메워줄 수 있는 무기가 거의 없다는 점이 큰 문제”라고 말했다.
그는 “지상 이동 표적은 매우 어렵다. 위치를 모르는 지대공 미사일들을 제거하기 위해 240발의 SDB를 그냥 사용할 수는 없고, 그 무기가 느리고 쉽게 탐지돼 적에게 격추될 수 있다면 더더욱 그렇다”고 말했다.

아마고스트는 다양한 스탠드오프 및 침투형 탄약을 보유하는 것이 미 공군의 억제력을 높일 것이라고 말했다.

그는 “모든 표적에 접근할 수 있고, 이를 지속적으로 위협 상태에 두며, 스탠드오프 방식과 침투 방식 모두에서 선택지를 제공하는 명령을 수행할 수 있다는 점을 입증해야 한다”며 “이 두 가지가 결합될 때 그 힘은 대단히 크다”고 말했다.

Midnight Hammer Lessons: USAF Needs More Tankers, Munitions | Air & Space Forces Magazine

A B-2 Spirit assigned to the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., departs after refueling with a KC-135 Stratotanker assigned to the 100th Air Refueling Wing at RAF Mildenhall, U.K., on June 18, 2020. The aerial refueling was conducted as part of a strategic bomber mission north of the Arctic Circle. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Joseph Barron.

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Midnight Hammer Lessons: USAF Needs More Tankers, Munitions

Feb. 2, 2026 | By Matthew Cox

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Air Force leaders hail recent strike missions like Midnight Hammer as a shining example of operational readiness, but that success also highlights the challenges ahead should USAF need to mount an extended long-range strike campaign.

Midnight Hammer employed 125 aircraft, including B-2 Spirit bombers, numerous refueling tankers as well as F-35 Lighting IIs, F-22 Raptors, F-15s, and F-16 Fighting Falcons. Just six months later, Air Force B-1B Lancer bombers, F-35s, F-22s, tankers, and other aircraft joined Operation Absolute Resolve, the successful capture of Venezuela’s former president, Nicolás Maduro and his wife.

“Operation Midnight Hammer, Absolute Resolve—that is a definition of readiness,” said Director of Staff Lt. Gen. Scott L. Pleus Jan. 29 at the Airpower Forum, hosted by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “We do things in the United States Air Force that no other country can do.”

The lessons of those operations will inform investment, training, and planning decisions for years to come, affecting aircraft and munitions requirements, fleet size decisions, and more. The Air Force once planned to buy 100 B-2s and perhaps 400 B-1s. But when the Cold War ended, those plans were seriously truncated.

Lt. Gen. Jason R. Armagost, deputy commander of Air Force Global Strike Command and Air Forces Strategic-Air at U.S. Strategic Command, said those requirements go beyond how many B-21 Raiders buys, a figure currently set at 100 Raiders but which some have called to increase to as many as double. The Air Force tanker fleet, he said, is no less critical to pulling off sustained bombing campaigns.

“The first thing I worry about when something like a Midnight Hammer starts to take shape is what does the tanker force looking like, what’s the position of it, and how do we posture in the world to actually do this,” Armagost said. “It’s not an easy thing.”

Midnight Hammer’s 36-hour, roundtrip bomber route took seven B-2s from Whiteman Air Force Base, Mo., to Iran and back, a trip in excess of 12,000 nautical miles. That required a massive tanker bridge, with aircraft positioned at key points all the way to refuel bombers en route to the target and back. Today’s tanker fleet numbers about 500, of which about 375 are KC-135 Stratotankers that average over 63 years old.

Maj. Claire Randolph, chief of Weapons and Tactics at Air Forces Central and one of the planners for the operations, said that’s a major concern for planners like her.

“I worry a lot about the tankers,” she said. “I think—because it’s not sexy, it’s not a weapon, and it’s not a fighter and it’s not a bomber—the tankers are often really left out in this conversation.”

That’s got Randolph “very concerned” over a serious limiting factor for operations. “If I were writing our request list for procuring things,” she said, “probably the first 100 things on the list would be tankers.”

The Air Force continues to buy KC-46 tankers and decided last July that it would forgo a competition for a so-called bridge tanker between the Pegasus and a future tanker and buy more of KC-46s instead. The service is also looking ahead to an entirely new capability, seeking industry ideas for the Next-Generation Air Refueling System, which potentially could be uncrewed.

Boeing’s MQ-25 Stingray, an uncrewed tanker developed for the Navy, is undergoing taxi tests and could pave the way for a future Air Force capability. But the size, capacity, range, and speed of the MQ-25 falls far short of what Air Force requirements would be, and would have to be scaled up extensively to match USAF requirements.  

Munitions Flexibility

Munitions present another challenge highlighted by operations like Midnight Hammer. Randolph said future operations will likely need munitions that can penetrate deeper to destroy facilities buried even further underground.

For Midnight Hammer, seven B-2s dropped 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, the world’s largest air-delivered bomb. The “MOP” includes 5,740-pound warhead encased in steel and fused to blow up an estimated 200 feet underground. The weapon was purpose-built and designed for that application, but North Korea and other potential adversaries have long been known to bury facilities deep underground as a means of protection. While the exact number purchased was never divulged, public records suggest as few as 20 were purchased.

Munitions for “hard, deeply buried targets are critical,” Randolph said. “If our adversaries are learning anything from our operations, they’re starting to put more things underground, and the Earth is a pretty difficult thing to penetrate.”

More options for stand-off weapons to destroy both mobile and stationary targets on the Earth’s surface are also needed. The B-2 was configured in the early to carry up to 80 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAMS; at the time, no one saw the utility in enabling it to carry up to 240 GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs I, or SDBs, even though those weapons reached initial operating capability in 2006, Armagost said.

“I don’t think anybody at the time was envisioning why you would ever need to carry more of something [than] for 80 targets,” he said. “But now, if you can take that a step further and think about what you could do with 240 SDBs—they are starting to talk about what we’re actually designing into future systems, which is smaller, modular capabilities that are form-fit to actually have a range and capability from a platform host. Because you can do different things with penetrating platforms and general purpose weapons or smaller weapons that you can’t do just based on the physics of fly out for standoff runs.”

Engaging moving surface targets using standoff munitions is more challenging, because those weapons need to be able to travel greater distances on their own power. There are limited options between a JDAMs and an AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, Randolph said. The maximum travel range for a JDAM is about 40 miles and the SDB II—the newer, GBU-53 StormBreaker developed for striking moving targets— has a range of 46 miles. By contrast, the JASSM can attack targets from more than 500 miles away.

“We don’t have a lot of things that fit in well there, which is a huge problem,” Randolph said.
“Surface mobile targets are really difficult, because you can’t just use 240 SDBs to go kill a bunch of [surface-to-air missiles] if you don’t know where they are or if that weapon is slow and easily detected and shut down by adversaries.”

Armagost said possessing a range of standoff and penetrating munitions would increase the Air Force’s deterrent capability.

“You have to have proof you can gain access to hold any target at risk, keep it at risk, and then carry out orders that provide options that can happen from standoff and can happen from penetrating,” Armogost said. “But in combination, those things are incredibly powerful.”

Air

[백선호]

AGM-88도 요격하는데 SDB는 요격이 더 쉽겠습니다.

JASSM과 SDB 사이는 ALBM으로 채워야 할 것 같은데 SRAM 비슷한 것이 다시 나올라나요?

[위종민]

공중발사 활공탄 계획들은 취소되고 부활하질 못하고 있는데, 활공탄 대신 개발난이도 낮은 ALBM이 그 자리를 채울 수도 있겠습니다.