Dayton (Ohio): Having carried out a pair of successful tests, the US Air Force expects to fly its hypersonic Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) at least once more this year.
The ARRW has flown twice in the last four months, first in May and then again in July. The July test completed the booster test phase and positioned it to enter all-up-round, or full system, testing. The successes follow a string of three failures in 2021, which drew criticism from lawmakers, who cut $161 million from the effort in fiscal 2022.
Gen. Duke Richardson, the head of Air Force Materiel Command, told reporters the upcoming test will be “a big one” for ARRW. Hypersonic systems can travel at speeds above Mach 5 and manoeuvre in flight, which makes them harder to track and target. The US has prioritized hypersonic weapons development in recent years, largely in response to the progress Russia and China have made in demonstrating the technology.
Speaking with reporters at AFMC’s Life Cycle Industry Day event in Dayton, Ohio, Richardson said he’s been pleased with the Air Force’s progress on ARRW and characterized the early failures as “burps.” Acknowledging that test failures are often accompanied by programmatic delays and time-consuming reviews, he said the service learns a lot from its missteps and he thinks Congress is starting to see the value of those lessons as well.
“There is more of an appetite now for test failure. It’s part of the process,” he said. “What we need to do is figure out . . . how do we get through failure faster? Because we’re going to fail.”
“We’re still going to focus on booster, of course, but we’re going to shift some additional focus on to the glider performance,” he said. The Air Force wants ARRW to reach early operational capability in 2023, and noted that meeting that target will be a challenge.
“We have more missiles to build and more flight tests to get through and complete than we’ve had at any other time in this program, with the goal of reaching early operational capability in 2023,” he said. “There’s just a lot going on. It’s an extremely aggressive schedule. So, you know, that keeps me up at night, just making sure we can meet all of those commitments.”
The Air Force is pursuing two major hypersonic weapon programs: ARRW and the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile. ARRW is an air-launched, boost-glide missile system that releases its payload once it has reached high speeds. That payload then separates from the rocket and “glides” to its target. HACM is a smaller, less expensive cruise missile that relies on air-breathing propulsion. The service requested a total of $577 million for its hypersonic research and development efforts in fiscal 2023.
On HACM, Lockheed is competing with Raytheon and Boeing. The Air Force hasn’t said how long it plans to continue to fund both programs, and Richardson said that by “riding two horses” in terms of hypersonic development, the service has set itself up for a dilemma should it need to select a single effort for future investment.
“I actually like them both, personally,” he said. “We may have to get to this position where we have to choose one or the other. That remains to be seen. I’m not in a position to answer how that’s going to come out.”
