Hypersonic (Mach 20) Missile Coming Five Years Faster Thanks to Acquisition Reform (AGM-183A)

[Nilgiri]

Hypersonic Missile Coming Five Years Faster Thanks to Acquisition Reform | Air & Space Forces Magazine

The Air Force’s Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon will become operational in 2022, five years faster than it would have under previous acquisition rules.

www.airforcemag.com

A rewrite of the Pentagon’s acquisition rulebook is allowing the Air Force’s AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) to progress five years faster than it would have under previous procedures, the service’s top uniformed acquisition officer said Dec. 3. The missile will achieve operational capability before the end of 2022, he said.

“If we had planned this as a traditional program, it would have taken an additional five years,” Lt. Gen. Duke Z. Richardson, military deputy to Air Force service acquisition executive Will Roper, said in a National Defense Industrial Association online program on acquisition reform. The ARRW “started in May of ’18,” and, although it has experienced “some hiccups,” it will achieve an early operational capability “by the fourth quarter of ’22,” he said, with “a residual capability once that’s done.”

The ARRW is the Air Force’s “hallmark rapid prototyping program,” he said.

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Footage from earlier in the year of initial (non kinetic) testing:

The Air Force took another step towards fielding a hypersonic weapon following its final captive-carry test of the Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (AGM-183A) under the wing of a B-52 Stratofortress off the Southern California coast on Aug 8, 2020. The AGM-183A is a hypersonic weapon planned for use by the United States Air Force, developed by Lockheed Martin, the boost glide weapon is propelled to a maximum speed of Mach 20 by a missile before gliding towards its target.

Film Credits: Video by Giancarlo Casem, 412th Test Wing Public Affairs

 

[Nilgiri]

Roper: ARRW Hypersonic Missile Will Fly This Month | Air & Space Forces Magazine

USAF will flight test the U.S. military’s first hypersonic missile this month, Air Force Acquisition boss Will Roper said Dec. 14.

www.airforcemag.com

The Air Force will flight test the U.S. military’s first hypersonic missile this month, Air Force acquisition boss Will Roper said Dec. 14 at the inaugural Doolittle Leadership Center Forum. But while having a hypersonic weapon is an achievement, Roper added, it is not a full solution to the challenges posed by increasingly capable peer adversaries.

Roper’s comments came during a conversation with Air Force Association President and retired Lt. Gen. Bruce “Orville” Wright at an event titled “From Acquisition to Lethality.” That event featured a three-general panel with top leaders from Air Force Materiel Command, who spoke from the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. The forum was produced in partnership with AFA’s Wright Memorial Chapter there.

The AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) beat out the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon as prototyping progressed, and it completed captive-carry testing earlier this year. The first planned booster test flight is expected this month with production beginning next year, Roper said.

Hypersonic capabilities will give the Air Force a valuable stand-off strike option, but may not be quite as crucial to U.S. defense strategy as it was to China’s, Roper said. He pointed to Chinese development to counter U.S. missile defense systems, which are not designed to take on maneuverable, ultra-fast weapons.

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