The US Air Force is cutting funding for Lockheed Martin's hypersonics program and continuing to fund Raytheon's program. Temporarily
The Air Force's proposed fiscal year 2025 budget includes $517 million to continue development of the hypersonic strike cruise missile, but the future weapons The airborne rapid response AGM-183A looks vague.
The service's fiscal year 2025 budget, released March 11, includes neither procurement nor research and development funding for Lockheed Martin's ARRW program. The service is scheduled to conduct its final comprehensive testing of the weapon soon and will complete a rapid prototyping program later this year.
HACM and ARRW are the Air Force's two main programs to develop hypersonic vehicles that can fly at speeds greater than Mach 5 and are highly maneuverable, making them difficult to track and shoot down by adversaries.
Both programs are hypersonic air-to-surface missiles, and the department's budget documents note that these programs complement each other. HACM is an air-breathing cruise missile, and ARRW is a hypersonic missile with a gliding guided warhead.
According to reports from the US intelligence communities (CIA, NSA, DIA) at a meeting of the US Congress, China and Russia “pay great attention to the development of hypersonic capabilities and have achieved impressive successes.” Some lawmakers have criticized the Pentagon's progress in deploying the U.S.'s own hypersonic weapons and warned that the country is falling behind.
Andrew Hunter, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, told reporters at the McAleese & Associates conference on March 7 that the results of the final ARRW test will help the Air Force “determine the maturity of the program and determine the set of hypersonic capabilities it will employ and what will be needed for use in a combat missile.”
"The Air Force remains committed to fully analyzing and understanding all test data collected during the ARRW rapid prototyping test series," the service said in a statement on the company's website. “This data will inform subsequent development and implementation decisions at ARRW.”
In an interview with Defense News, Lockheed Martin expressed pride in its work on the ARRW: “Lockheed Martin has exceeded the requirements of the ARRW program, creating a mature, fully qualified weapons system and an established production line,” the company said.
“The exceptional work done by this government contractor team will provide synergies for subsequent opportunities. Lockheed Martin will continue to apply our expertise to provide tactical and operational capabilities to enable the rapid deployment of revolutionary hypersonic strike capabilities across the U.S. military.”
Lt. Gen. Dale White, Hunter's military deputy, told lawmakers March 12 that the ARRW program has been a "categorical success to date" and said a final decision on the program will be "based on a review of its final flight tests."
The future of the ARRW is in doubt after a failed test in March 2023. Shortly afterward, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told lawmakers that the program was "struggling." Kendall also told that hearing that the service is more committed to the HACM system, which he said has been "quite successful" and will be compatible with more of the service's aircraft.
The day after Kendall testified to Congress, Hunter, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, told lawmakers that the service does not plan to continue procuring the ARRW after prototyping is completed.
Budget documents released Monday said HACM would be able to fly on "vastly different trajectories" than a glider rocket like the ARRW, and "its added complexity will make it an even greater threat to adversaries."
The documents state that HACM is also smaller in size and weight than ARRW, making it easier to install on more aircraft from tactical fighter-bombers to strategic bombers. The total cost of "Airborne Rapid Reaction Weapons" will be $1,7 billion.
Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile's $517 million research, test and evaluation funds would be a significant increase from FY 2023, when it received $387 million in R&D funding, and FY 2024, when the Air Force requested $382 million for the program.
The Air Force also plans to spend nearly $449 million on the AGM-182A HACM in fiscal year 2026 and just over $200 million on the program in the next two years. Overall, the Air Force plans to spend more than $2,4 billion on HACM.
In 2022, the Air Force awarded a contract to Raytheon subsidiary (now called RTX) and Northrop Grumman to develop HACM, which grew out of a program called the Hypersonic Air-Break Weapons Concept, which was led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency HAWC (MOHAWC). . Technologies developed for the HAWC experimental program evolved into a program to develop the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), which could be used as a combat weapon.
The contract for further development of HACM was awarded to Raytheon in September 2022. The HACM rocket is expected to be powered by a Northrop Grumman scramjet engine. The new missile has an alphanumeric code reserved - AGM-182A HACM - in fact, the Pentagon's first hypersonic missile. The HAWC hypersonic missile launcher, without a booster, filled with fuel, weighs 1 kg. This missile has plenty of room for a nuclear warhead, with the W-100 and W-80 likely candidates.
Lockheed Martin has published a render of the F-35 fighter with a HAWC missile suspended on the inner underwing pylon.
The geometry of the F-35 is publicly available. The length of the aircraft is 15,57 meters, the wingspan is 10,67 meters, the keel height is 4,39 meters. Using the method of proportional scaling, one can quite accurately calculate the mass and size parameters of the rocket. Moreover, there is one more hint - the maximum load of the internal underwing pylons is 5 pounds.
As a result: the length of the rocket is 4,152 meters. The diameter of the midsection of the steps is 0,593 meters. Starting weight: 5 pounds (000 kg). 2% of the starting weight falls on the starting (boosting) solid fuel accelerator. The diameter of the product along the midsection is 250 meters. Typically, missiles of a class such as the AGM-50A, with a flight range of up to a thousand kilometers, have a throw weight of about 0,593 percent of the launch weight, that is, in our case, up to 182 pounds (10 kg).
The Americans have little choice as a nuclear warhead: use either the relatively new (modernized) W80-4 nuclear warhead, or the W-61-3, W-61-4 nuclear warhead variants. However, the first one is based on the W-61-4 device, and they all have the same weight - 290 pounds (130 kg). Another option proposed for installation on the rocket, the W-84 NAZU, there are 350 such devices in the warehouses of the US Department of Energy.
W84 is a NAM originally developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for use on the BGM-2G Gryphon (GLCM) medium-range (780 km) land-based cruise missile.
Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition Andrew Hunter told the McAleese conference that while the AGM-182A HACM is still a so-called "mid-level acquisition program" designed to rapidly develop prototypes, he emphasized to industry that "the Air Force is committed to Once such opportunities are realized, industry must act as the government works on a production program.”
“The goal is to develop a field capability that we will put into production in the shortest possible time frame that we can develop and reasonably implement,” Hunter said. He later told reporters that flight test dates for the AGM-182A HACM have not yet been set.
The Army and Navy also expect delays in their joint hypersonics program as testing falls behind schedule. The Army calls its land-launched MGM-51A LRHW (Long Range Hypersonic Weapon) missile, dubbed the Dark Eagle, the “Long Range Hypersonic Weapon,” and the Navy calls its sea-launched version the “Conventional Rapid Strike.”
Naval version - U/RGM - 51A CPS (Conventional Prompt Strike) missile - jointly developed by the Navy fleet and the army. The universal solid-fuel MRBM AUR is two-stage, length is 10,44 meters, midsection diameter is 887 millimeters. Starting weight – 7 kilograms.
The maximum flight range of the missile is 1 nautical miles (000 km), equipped with a maneuvering warhead with hypersonic flight speed Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) in the Block 1 modification, theoretically capable of reaching speeds of more than 850 km/h. The weight of the warhead is 1 pounds (6 kilograms).
It is possible to equip it with both a conventional and nuclear warhead; theoretically, it will allow it to accommodate any nuclear warhead available in the US arsenal, from light ones, such as the W-61, to heavy ones, such as the W-88.
The Army and Navy had planned to purchase hypersonic missiles in 2025, but those steps have now been put on hold to allow development companies to catch up and refine prototypes while testing their missiles.
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