U.S. B-2 stealth bomber fires LRASM anti-ship missile for first time in Valiant Shield 2026 Pacific exercise.

On June 27, 2026, a U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber assigned to the 509th Bomb Wing successfully launched an AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) during a live-fire sinking exercise (SINKEX) north of the Mariana Islands. The operation, conducted during Exercise Valiant Shield 2026, targeted the decommissioned Austin-class amphibious transport dock USS Juneau (LPD-10) in the Philippine Sea. This first publicly acknowledged operational employment of the LRASM from the B-2 explicitly expands the aircraft's mission profile into long-range maritime strike, offering a highly survivable platform capable of penetrating sophisticated anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) networks.

The live-fire exercise demonstrated the tactical integration of the low-observable B-2 Spirit with the precision-guided AGM-158C LRASM, which features autonomous targeting capabilities, passive sensing, and an estimated operational range of 500 nautical miles. By destroying the strategic naval target under a joint distributed maritime architecture, the operation verified the U.S. military's multi-domain capability to execute long-range anti-surface warfare in the Western Pacific theater.

Related topic: U.S. B-2 Bomber and Navy Carrier Fighters Execute Strategic Long-Range Maritime Strike Drill

This live-fire SINKEX during Valiant Shield 2026 marks the first publicly acknowledged operational employment of the AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile from the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. (Picture source: USAF)

On June 27, 2026, the U.S. Pacific Air Forces used a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber from the 509th Bomb Wing to launch an AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) during a live-fire SINKEX north of the Mariana Islands, marking the first publicly acknowledged operational live-fire employment of the LRASM from the B-2. The bomber, which struck the decommissioned Austin-class amphibious transport dock USS Juneau (LPD-10) in the Philippine Sea during Valiant Shield 2026, was reportedly identified as B-2A Spirit of South Carolina (88-0331). The launch moves the B-2 into a more explicit maritime strike role, adding long-range anti-ship attack to an aircraft already used by the U.S. for nuclear deterrence, conventional strike, penetrating land attack, and stand-off missile employment.

It also shows that U.S. anti-surface warfare is being distributed across a broader maritime strike architecture in which stealth bombers, non-stealth bombers, carrier aircraft, F-35 variants, and maritime patrol aircraft can contribute to the same LRASM attack from different distances, axes, and basing locations. Valiant Shield 2026 exercise ran from June 21 to July 1, 2026, across Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Japan and the Mariana Islands Range Complex, and was the eleventh iteration of a biennial U.S.-led joint field training exercise first conducted in 2006. The 2026 edition was also the second Valiant Shield conducted as a fully multinational exercise, with the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand participating.

All U.S. military services were integrated with U.S. Space Command and U.S. Transportation Command, because long-range maritime strike in the Western Pacific depends on space-based sensing, logistics, refueling, distributed command and control, and joint targeting. Major assets included the USS George Washington Carrier Strike Group, JS Kaga (DDH-184), JS Fuyuzuki (DD-118), JS Jingei (SS-515), HMCS Charlottetown (FFH-339), P-8A Poseidon aircraft, submarines, strategic bombers, and multi-domain ISR assets. The exercise area lies 2,500 to 3,000 km east of Taiwan and roughly 3,000 km from China's eastern coastline, which places it beyond the First Island Chain but still within a realistic operating area for bombers, submarines, carrier groups and maritime patrol aircraft in a Taiwan or Philippine Sea contingency.

The B-2 Spirit is a low-observable strategic bomber with a crew of two to three personnel, an unrefueled range of more than 6,900 miles, or 11,000 km, and a payload capacity of up to 40,000 lb. Twenty-one aircraft were built, but about nineteen remain in service after one loss in 2008 and one aircraft damaged in 2022. Its weapons set includes conventional precision-guided bombs, nuclear gravity bombs such as the B61 and B83, the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, and stand-off weapons from the AGM-158 family, including JASSM, JASSM-ER and LRASM. The B-1B remains the more efficient bomber for carrying large numbers of LRASMs, but the B-2 brings lower observability, longer-range penetration options, and a different basing model.

The 2026 LRASM launch also follows the B-2's 2024 QUICKSINK demonstration during a SINKEX, when the aircraft used modified JDAM bombs for maritime strike much closer to the target area. The AGM-158C LRASM was developed from the AGM-158B JASSM-ER but modified for anti-surface warfare against naval targets. The missile originated under DARPA and is produced by Lockheed Martin, with the same broader JASSM weighs about 2,760 lb (1,250 kg) and carries a 1,000 lb (453.6 kg) WDU-42/B penetrating blast-fragmentation warhead with an FMU-156/B fuze. It uses a Williams F107 turbofan engine and has an estimated range of 500 nautical miles, or 926 km.

That range changes the launch aircraft's risk profile because a B-2, B-1B, F/A-18E/F or F-35C does not need to be within a short-range release distance against a surface combatant. The missile's real value, however, comes from a combination of range, low-observable shaping, passive sensing, onboard discrimination and an attack profile intended to complicate detection, classification and engagement by shipboard air defenses. The LRASM's guidance architecture is built for a maritime environment where the target may move, communications may be degraded, GPS may be jammed, and external ISR may not remain continuously available. The missile uses GPS, inertial navigation, and onboard sensor-aided guidance to reduce dependence on uninterrupted datalink support and real-time external targeting updates.

Its seeker suite combines passive radio-frequency sensing with imaging infrared, allowing the missile to search, classify and discriminate targets with limited emissions. In terminal flight, a LRASM descends to a low-altitude sea-skimming profile, reducing the radar horizon and compressing the reaction time available to a ship's defense. The missile's design is also relevant in crowded sea lanes because the Western Pacific is not an empty battlespace; merchant traffic, auxiliary vessels, escorts, decoys and neutral shipping can complicate targeting. Therefore, the LRASM was developed to identify high-value ships and avoid non-target vessels, which is a more demanding problem than simply flying to coordinates. Its electronic counter-countermeasures, low-observable body and passive approach are also intended to increase survivability against China's naval air defenses that combine surveillance radars, electronic warfare, medium- and long-range surface-to-air missiles, decoys and close-in systems.

The LRASM became operational on the B-1B Lancer in 2018, giving the U.S. Air Force a long-range bomber-based anti-ship capability with large salvo potential. U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet operational capability followed in 2019, bringing the weapon into carrier aviation and making it relevant to carrier strike group operations. F-35C flight-science testing ran from September 2024 to April 2026, a necessary phase because the missile is a heavy external store and must be cleared across flight conditions before full operational integration. Future or continuing integration paths include the F-35B/C, P-8A Poseidon, F-15E Strike Eagle and F-15EX Eagle II. Australia has approved and acquired up to 200 LRASMs for F/A-18F operations, giving the missile an allied Indo-Pacific role and increasing the number of potential launch aircraft in a regional contingency.

The B-2's role is different: to add a stealth bomber launch option that can operate over long distances, reduce exposure to defended areas, and create another axis of attack for Chinese air and naval defense planners to account for. The B-2/LRASM pairing is most important in the Western Pacific because it addresses the operational effect of China's anti-access/area-denial network. The People's Liberation Army has spent more than a decade building a system intended to keep U.S. and allied forces away from Taiwan, the South China Sea, the East China Sea and the First Island Chain. That system includes long-range ballistic and cruise missiles, integrated air defenses, combat aircraft, surface combatants, submarines, over-the-horizon sensors, maritime patrol aircraft, satellites and command networks to detect and engage U.S. forces before they can operate freely near China's coastline.

The B-2 does not need to fly over the Chinese mainland or directly above a defended fleet to contribute to the maritime fight. With more than 6,900 miles, or 11,000 km, of unrefueled range, aerial refueling access, and a 500-nautical-mile LRASM shot, it can generate anti-ship pressure from outside many defended maritime areas. It can also operate from the continental United States or from forward locations such as Guam and Diego Garcia, reducing reliance on forward airfields. That matters because shorter-range tactical aircraft and aircraft carriers can be threatened by the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, with a range of about 1,500 km, and the DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile, with a range of 4,000 to 5,000 km.

For Chinese defense planners, the growing LRASM launch network creates a tracking and interception problem; a B-1B can generate larger missile salvos, an F/A-18E/F can launch from a carrier air wing, an F-35 variant can combine sensing and strike, a P-8A can link maritime surveillance with future weapons employment, and an F-15E or F-15EX can add land-based launch capacity. Adding the B-2 introduces a low-observable bomber with intercontinental reach, which complicates Chinese assumptions about where a U.S. anti-ship salvo might originate and how much warning naval forces may receive. For the United States, the SINKEX was also valuable because it tested the complete kill chain against an actual ship rather than a simplified target.

The sequence includes target detection, tracking, identification, weapon assignment, bomber routing, launch clearance, missile release, midcourse navigation, terminal acquisition, target discrimination, impact assessment, and battle damage assessment. It also forces coordination among bombers, submarines, surface combatants, P-8A aircraft, carrier aviation, ISR assets and space-based sensors across long distances. In a Western Pacific conflict, those steps would occur under electronic attack, missile threat, cyber pressure and contested communications, so a live-fire event during Valiant Shield gives the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force a more realistic way to evaluate whether its distributed maritime strike architecture can function when individual ships, aircraft, sensors or bases are under pressure.

Written by Jérôme Brahy

Jérôme Brahy is a defense analyst and documentalist at Army Recognition. He specializes in naval modernization, aviation, drones, armored vehicles, and artillery, with a focus on strategic developments in the United States, China, Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye, and Belgium. His analyses go beyond the facts, providing context, identifying key actors, and explaining why defense news matters on a global scale.

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