It turns out that the Americans deceived everyone?
Strange, surprising, unexpected - such words suggest themselves from the news that in the very near future the US Air Force will conduct an important test of a hypersonic weapons in the pacific ocean.
A U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber was photographed last week in Guam with an interesting component on its suspension: an AGM-183A air-launched missile (ARRW). It is believed that the bomber was involved in a secret final test of the weapon, which may even have already taken place.
The ARRW was one of several Mach 5+ weapon systems developed by the Pentagon, and although it appears to have been abandoned recently, the Department of Defense is still testing. And this begs the question: why?
There are two options: ARRW was indeed abandoned last year, but there are so few tests of hypersonic weapons that any tests are useful. And in order to obtain any data on the characteristics and capabilities of hypersonic weapons, the Pentagon decided to “shoot” all manufactured ARRW samples.
The second option is less pleasant. In the time since the “failure,” the developers have worked at a feverish pace to eliminate the shortcomings and re-submit the ARRW for testing. Or all this fuss was originally part of a rather cunning plan aimed at lulling China's attention.
Let us recall that in 2021, ARRW failed several flight tests in a row - the product did not start or could not turn on the rocket engines after launch and fell into the sea. But in 2022, the weapon completed three successful flight tests. This included at least one prototype flight in December of the same year, during which the launch vehicle successfully launched a glide vehicle that reached hypersonic speeds.
But after a second test launch over California on March 13, the Air Force could only claim that the aircraft was "successfully launched" from the B-52H bomber carrying it and "completed multiple missions." This is not what would be considered a perfect execution of the ARRW mission, but it is not a failure either.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told House members that it "was not a success. We didn't get the data we needed." But at that time, the Pentagon still had two prototypes at its disposal with which the program could be saved.
But in general, unfortunately for the military, it seems that the result was negative and that test was the last straw. Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter told the House Armed Services Committee that the Air Force was no longer interested in purchasing the ARRW, a weapon that years earlier was confidently heralded as finally closing the capability gap with the missile arsenals of China and Russia.
What can I say... It happens.
Signs that the test could be carried out again appeared on social media and in the BBC's media feed over the weekend. The US Department of Defense Information Service has published several photographs of the B-52H Stratofortress heavy strategic bomber with an ARRW combat missile.
The bomber was located at Andersen Air Force Base in the US territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. As one observer noted on social networks, similar photos were taken at Edwards Air Force Base in 2023 before a similar test, thereby giving everyone something to think about.
In addition to the photos, another social media user put together several notices for pilots and navigational warnings in the vicinity of Kwajalein Atoll.
Notices to Airmen, also known as NOTAMs, are intended to temporarily prevent civil aircraft from entering a described area for a specified period of time, such as for a missile test. Navigational warnings, or NAVWARNs, also apply to mariners, commercial shipping and private shipping. Collectively, the NOTAM and NAVWARN issued cover not only the missile's predicted flight path from the launch point to Kwajalein Atoll, but also the flight areas of the dedicated aircraft that will monitor the test, particularly the launch and final impact phases.
Kwajalein Atoll is a US government test site in the Marshall Islands. The atoll survived several atmospheric nuclear tests in the 1950s and is now part of the Ronald Reagan Missile Defense Test Site. Today, the atoll is used as a target for various missile tests, most notably Minuteman III missiles launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
The AGM-183A ARRW was one of several hypersonic missile programs that the US government initiated after Russian and Chinese hypersonic programs were unveiled in the mid-2010s. The ARRW was designed as a high-speed non-nuclear missile capable of destroying mobile targets as well. In 2018, Flight Global said the weapon reaches speeds of up to Mach 20, or nearly 25 km/h.
The ARRW program suffered from development problems and, as a result, a number of failed tests. The Air Force canceled the missile in 2023, but decided to conduct two final tests and launch the last two prototype missiles. This is the official version.
Hypersonic atmospheric flight at high Mach speeds is a relatively little-studied area, and the more data the better. While hypersonic flight was first achieved in the late 1950s, and today's ballistic missiles again enter the atmosphere at Mach 18, new hypersonic weapons fly at high Mach numbers entirely in the atmosphere. This subjects them to incredible levels of air friction and pressure that were not fully understood until recently.
After the cancellation of ARRW, the Air Force focused on developing the HACM hypersonic attack cruise missile. In 2023, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall compared the two weapons and stated that HACM is "compatible with more of our aircraft and will give us more overall combat capability" than ARRW. The HACM is a smaller missile that can be carried by fighter aircraft, while the ARRW was so large that it could only be carried by bombers. The HACM is also believed to have a shorter range due to its smaller size. This also suggests that a bomber can carry more HACMs than ARRWs, allowing one aircraft to attack more targets in wartime.
The situation is more than controversial, because the practice of modern warfare has shown that not every aircraft will be able to get close to the territory controlled by modern air defense systems. And here a longer-range missile is no worse.
Although there are clear signs of an ARRW trial, no one yet knows when it will take place, or if the trial has already occurred. The Air Force typically announces tests within 72 hours of them taking place, so time, as they say, will tell. Both the NOTAM and NAVWARN have an expiration date, so the test will definitely occur within the scope of these warnings.
It makes sense to just wait for the next stage; sooner or later everything will become known whether it was a trivial study of hypersonic propulsion or something more. There are certain suspicions that abandoning the ARRW program may be a cunning move. In any case, China simply must strain its intelligence network to find out what the hypersonic missile tests in the Pacific really are.
Americans are such a nation... Capable of unpleasant surprises. You and I know.
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