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The War Zone
Broken ARRW: Air Force’s First Hypersonic Missile Fails During Inaugural Test
The prototype missile never left the wing of the B-52H bomber carrying it during the hugely anticipated test.
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JOSEPH TREVITHICK
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PUBLISHED APR 6, 2021 11:23 AM
Broken ARRW: Air Force’s First Hypersonic Missile Fails During Inaugural Test
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The U.S. Air Force's hotly anticipated first live-fire flight test of a prototype AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon hypersonic missile, or ARRW, was unsuccessful. The service says there was "an issue on the aircraft," a B-52H bomber assigned to the 419th Flight Test Squadron out of Edwards Air Force Base in California, and it "did not launch" the weapon.
The abortive test was conducted over the Point Mugu Sea Test Range in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California on Apr. 5, 2021. This came a day after the end of a self-imposed 30-day deadline that the Air Force had announced on March 5. The plan had been for this launch to validate the performance of the missile's rocket booster, as well as the separation of a simulated unpowered boost-glide vehicle payload. The surrogate vehicle was not designed to actually fly and was expected to disintegrate after release from the missile body.
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US Air Force personnel work on an AGM-183A captive-carry test article loaded on a B-52H bomber during an earlier test., USAF
"Instead, the test missile was not able to complete its launch sequence and was safely retained on the aircraft which returned to Edwards AFB," according to an official Air Force press release. The Air Force has conducted seven previous flight tests involving captive-carry test articles that are not designed to be released from the B-52Hs carrying them. At present, the service plans to buy at least eight full-up AGM-183A prototypes, some of which could be deployed in a limited operational capacity depending on how future flight testing goes.
“The ARRW program has been pushing boundaries since its inception and taking calculated risks to move this important capability forward," Air Force Brigadier General Heath Collins, the service's Program Executive Officer for Weapons, said in a statement. "While not launching was disappointing, the recent test provided invaluable information to learn from and continue ahead. This is why we test."
A complete prototype of the AGM-183A with an actual hypersonic boost-glide vehicle inside its nose has also yet to be tested. Operational examples of these weapons will use their rocket boosters to loft those vehicles to an optimal speed and altitude. After that, the wedge-shaped vehicle is designed to glide toward its target along an atmospheric flight trajectory at hypersonic velocity, defined as anything above Mach 5.
The boost-glide vehicle is cable of making more unpredictable movements compared to traditional ballistic missiles, even those with maneuverable reentry vehicles. This gives the hypersonic weapon distinct advantages for penetrating through hostile air and missile defenses to reach time-sensitive or other high-value targets. The combination of speed and maneuverability also presents novel challenges to opponents when it comes to spotting and tracking these weapons, which, in turn, makes it extremely hard to defend against them in any way, including simply trying to move critical assets out of the target area.
The Air Force has previously said that ARRW will only need between 10 and 12 minutes to hit targets 1,000 miles away. This could suggest the weapon has an expected average speed of between 5,000 and 6,000 miles per hour, or roughly between Mach 6.5 and Mach 8.
This first flight test had already been much anticipated, having been pushed back twice already since the end of 2020. Notices to Airmen (NOTAM), which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had begun issuing 10 days ago, regar
