The U.S. Air Force will not continue the hypersonic weapons program being developed by Lockheed Martin Corporation as officials in Washington signal greater support for another initiative by rival U.S. corporation Raytheon, Bloomberg reports.
The U.S. Air Force “does not currently intend to make further purchases” of the weapon known as the ARRW (Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon), an advanced hypersonic cruise missile with a solid-fuel booster and a Lockheed Martin guided vehicle, although it will conduct two additional flight tests to “gather important data,” Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition Andrew Hunter told the House Armed Services Subcommittee last Wednesday.
Hunter did not explain why the Pentagon is abandoning the ARRW program, but it comes days after a recent hypersonic missile test failed.
Earlier this week, U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall acknowledged that the ARRW test “failed” because “we didn’t get the data we needed.” He said the U.S. Air Force is “more committed” to another weapon called the Hypersonic Attack cruise missile, created by Raytheon. It was also indicated that the Pentagon sees “a definite role” for the Raytheon missile because “it is compatible with more of our aircraft and will generally give us more combat capability.”
The Raytheon design flies on its own, while the ARRW is launched from another missile before the warhead separates from it and heads toward the target at hypersonic speed, Bloomberg notes.
The strike system for the U.S. Air Force is being developed to hit targets at eight times the speed of sound and cover a distance of about 1,000 miles (1,600 km).
The Congressional Research Service reported in a Feb. 13 report that the Air Force has repeatedly “pushed back the timeline” for the hypersonic missile and now says it could be operational as early as this fall. Three previous failed tests of the ARRW prototype model derailed plans to put the missile into production last year. The Pentagon had hoped to announce the United States’ first operational hypersonic weapon by September 30, 2022.
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