A 'ship killer' from a dead program: what is the US Air Force counting on?
Several years ago, the Pentagon stopped developing the advanced aviation AGM-183A ARRW hypersonic missile. Subsequently, there was repeated talk of restarting this project, but only now have real proposals been made. The Defense Ministry is proposing not just resuming work on the ARRW, but taking the program in a new direction, creating an air-launched anti-ship missile based on it. weapon long-range. If the proposal is approved by Congress, the updated project will begin in the next fiscal year.
Financial requests
The Pentagon and Congress are currently working on the defense budget for fiscal year 2027, which begins on October 1. The Defense Department has already submitted a draft document outlining spending on current and future projects, including the reactivation of the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW).
This isn't a simple reboot, but a significantly redesigned version of ARRW Increment 2. The FY2027 budget proposal requests $296 million for its development. Taking into account integration and baseline testing, the total program request for next year is approximately $346 million.
The Pentagon's long-term plan calls for further investment growth: approximately $548 million in FY2028 and a total of approximately $1,7 billion by 2030. This is already comparable to the cost of a full-fledged weapons program, not just a pilot R&D project.
The key difference between the Increment 2 and the original version is its target reorientation. While the baseline AGM-183A was designed to strike stationary ground targets with known coordinates, the Increment 2 is being developed primarily as a long-range anti-ship weapon. The warhead is expected to feature a fully functional homing head and a two-way data link, enabling it to attack moving naval targets. In American and Russian publications, the modification has already been informally dubbed the "ship killer." The primary operational motivation is said to be countering large surface forces of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) in the Western Pacific.
According to the Pentagon, the project does not require excessive investment or a long timeline: key technologies have already been developed within the original program. This assertion is controversial: it was precisely the development of the design—separation from the launch vehicle, engine ignition, and stage separation—that spanned 2021–2023 that was the main problem with the ARRW and the formal reason for its cancellation. The timeline also appears ambitious: accommodating the development of the updated guidance system, integration, and initial testing within a single fiscal year is a plan that reflects budgetary expectations, not a realistic technical schedule.
Budget work will continue for several more months. Barring any major complications, the document will be adopted by early October, and the Pentagon will receive the requested funding.
New attempt
The AGM-183A ARRW was developed by Lockheed Martin since 2018. In June 2019, a prototype was first flown on a B-52H, but without a launch.
Flight tests were extremely difficult. April 2021: the rocket failed to separate from the pylon due to an onboard software error, which failed to receive a readiness signal. July 2021: the release proceeded normally, but the solid rocket booster failed to ignite due to a failure in the ignition circuit. December 2021: testing was interrupted before separation due to a telemetry failure. The first successful launch took place only in May 2022, followed by several successful tests.
B-52H with a pair of ARRW missiles
On March 13, 2023, another critical failure occurred during the launch of the full-scale prototype (All-Up Round): the payload fairing failed to separate properly from the hypersonic glide vehicle, and terminal flight data was lost. On March 29, 2023, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition Andrew Hunter stated at a congressional hearing that the Air Force did not plan to procure the ARRW after completing the remaining tests. The program was scrapped in favor of the competing HACM (Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, Raytheon) project, an air-breathing hypersonic missile on which the Air Force had placed its primary focus.
Legally, the program was not completely closed: the Air Force conducted several more launches through the end of 2023 and early 2024 "to collect data useful for other hypersonic programs." By November 2023, analytical reports from the IISS and the Arms Control Association considered the program effectively closed.
It's important to understand that the ARRW is only one element of the US hypersonic base. The Navy's CPS/IRCPS (sea-based Conventional Prompt Strike, for Zumwalt-class destroyers and Virginia-class submarines) program and the land-based Dark Eagle LRHW are developing in parallel. Both use the common C-HGB (Common Hypersonic Glide Body), developed jointly by the Army and Navy. The AGM-183A uses a different design, with its own glide body, which partly explains why it can be revived separately from other hypersonic projects, without affecting the rest of the line.
In mid-2025, the Air Force command announced that it would not abandon the concept underlying ARRW. Apparently, the necessary procedures were not completed last year, so the proposals were only included in the FY2027 budget proposal.
The return of the ARRW Increment 2 to the HACM, given its continued existence, makes perfect sense: the two systems serve different niches. The HACM is a relatively compact ramjet-powered cruise missile designed for a wide range of launch vehicles and mass deployment. The ARRW is a large aeroballistic missile with a glide vehicle optimized for long-range strikes against high-value or hardened targets. The reorientation of Increment 2 toward naval targets makes the ARRW and HACM complementary rather than competitive systems.
Improved features
The AGM-183A is a two-stage, solid-fuel, aeroballistic missile with a detachable, unpowered hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) using a boost-glide configuration. It is approximately 6,7 meters (22 feet) long and has a launch weight of approximately 3 tons (6600 pounds). The HGV is housed within the fairing, while the rest of the missile's body is dedicated to the solid-fuel booster.
Preparing for the final test launch, 2024.
After release from the carrier aircraft, the missile ignites its engine and accelerates to hypersonic speed: stated to be "more than Mach 5," though some sources place the glide vehicle's peak velocity during the approach phase at Mach 7–8. The HGV then separates and flies independently to the target, maneuvering its course and altitude. The claimed range of the original AGM-183A is approximately 1000 miles (1600 km). The range of Increment 2 has not been officially published.
Unlike air-breathing hypersonic missiles (like the HACM), which maintain speed using ramjets for most of their flight, the boost-glide design offers greater acceleration and potentially greater range at the expense of structural simplicity; hence the Air Force's parallel interest in both architectures.
The basic AGM-183A was equipped with an autopilot and an inertial navigation system and was designed to engage stationary targets with known coordinates. It carried a conventional warhead of limited mass; the overall lethal effect, according to the developer, was offset by the kinetic energy of the hypersonic warhead at hypersonic speed.
Increment 2 will retain the key components of the original missile, but will feature a redesigned guidance system: a fully functional seeker (type undisclosed) and a two-way data link. These features are aimed at the modification's key function—destroying surface targets on the high seas. Plans for Increment 2 include expanding the launch vehicle fleet: in addition to the B-52H and B-1B, integration with the F-15EX heavy fighter is being considered.
Installing a seeker on a hypersonic vehicle is a challenging engineering challenge: the plasma cloud that forms around the hull at speeds of approximately Mach 7 degrades signal transmission for both radar and optical sensors. This is one of the reasons why no country has yet produced a hypersonic missile with full-cycle homing. A two-way communication channel partially alleviates this problem: the missile can receive target designation and trajectory corrections from outside before reaching the terminal phase, where its own seeker operates.
However, the requirement for external target designation is becoming a separate challenge. To engage a moving surface target at a range of approximately a thousand kilometers or more, the Air Force needs a comprehensive reconnaissance and real-time data transmission system: imagery and electronic reconnaissance satellites, patrol drones, and AWACS ships and aircraft. Without this, even a well-functioning missile won't know where to fly. Essentially, the Increment 2 anti-ship missile isn't a standalone munition, but rather part of a distributed combat system, and its development will take no less time and money than the missile itself.
In terms of its overall class, the AGM-183A is most closely related to the Russian Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, which is also an air-launched aeroballistic missile system. However, their design is different: the Kinzhal is based on the Iskander-M missile and flies to its target as a single unit, while the ARRW separates from the launch vehicle into an independent hypersonic glide vehicle with its own trajectory. Competitors have not publicly identified a direct equivalent to the Increment 2—an air-launched hypersonic glide vehicle with an anti-ship seeker—in open sources.
Big plans
Restarting the ARRW is not only a technical decision but also a political one. The Pentagon must convince Congress that the program, canceled in 2023 due to setbacks and cost overruns, now justifies $1,7 billion through 2030 thanks to its fundamentally new role as a "ship killer." Meanwhile, the key problems of the previous ARRW—stage separation, stage separation, and fairing separation—remain intact, and now the hypersonic seeker and external targeting contour are added to them.
How the Air Force addresses these three sets of questions will determine whether Increment 2 becomes a viable long-range anti-ship weapon for the Pacific theater or will suffer the same fate as the first iteration.
Information