An upcoming all-up-round (AUR) test of the Lockheed Martin [LMT] AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) will conclude its rapid prototyping and help determine future U.S. Air Force hypersonic missile requirements, service acquisition chief Andrew Hunter said on March 7.
In September 2022, the Air Force awarded RTX [RTX]–then Raytheon–a $985 million contract for the air-breathing Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) (Defense Daily, Sept. 22, 2022). The company beat out Lockheed Martin and Boeing [BA] for the award.
Hunter said on March 7 that “there has been useful testing already on HACM-like capabilities” but that the Air Force has not set HACM prototype testing dates yet.
HACM grew out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)/Air Force Hypersonic Airbreathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) program (Defense Daily, Jan. 30, 2023).
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in 2021 that scramjet engine-propelled, air-breathing hypersonic weapons showed more promise than hypersonic glide vehicle missiles like ARRW, but two AUR test flights from B-52H bombers–one test on Dec. 9, 2022 and the other on March 24 last year–have kept ARRW alive. The Air Force had said that ARRW could be operational by the fall of last year.
“One of the things that was good about the way ARRW was constructed as a rapid prototyping program is that they did focus on manufacturability,” Hunter told reporters at the 15th annual McAleese & Associates’ defense programs conference on March 7. “It’s not just thrown together a prototype any way you can to get to demonstrating the technical capability they were shooting for. It was to do it in a way that you could say, ‘This is something I could produce at a reasonable rate of production.’ This is something we’d also look to do as part of the HACM program.”
While Kendall had cast some doubt on hypersonic glide missile technology in the past, Hunter said on March 7 that “there are advantages to multiple different approaches to hypersonics, and it’s all about how you get after specific target sets that are the most readily served by a hypersonic vehicle.”