US conducts Hypersonic missile test without evident success

News, US March 26, 2023 , by IRIA No Comments

The United States Air Force has revealed that it conducted a test launch for its AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapons or ARRW, on March 13, 2023. The announcement remained unclear on the success of the hypersonic missile test.

The U.S. Air Force said that the test was conducted using a B-52H Stratofortress bomber jet. The Lockheed Martin-manufactured and fully operational prototype version of the ARRW were launched off the coast of California. The missile was aimed at testing the end-to-end performance of the ARRW technology.

Without specifying the details, the Air Force statement said that the test “met several objectives”. The wording of the statement suggests that the test was not a complete success, however, the U.S. Air Force has not provided any details on the matter. Earlier in December 2022, the U.S. Air Force conducted a similar ARRW test and stated that “all objectives were met” during the test confirming its success.

The current statement also highlighted those engineers and testers from the ARRW team “are collecting data for further analysis”, further confirming the doubts about the tests’ evident success. The test was conducted by the 412th Test Wing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The U.S. Department of Defense is currently pursuing two types of hypersonic weapons technologies, the boost-glide systems that place a maneuverable glide vehicle atop a ballistic missile or booster and cruise missiles that would use highspeed scramjets to travel at hypersonic speeds. The ARRW is known as a hypersonic boost-glide weapon system.

*^{A B-52H Stratofortress assigned to the 419th Flight Test Squadron takes off from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. U.S., on Aug. 8, 2020. (Image Credit: U.S. Air Force/Matt Williams)}*

Lockheed Martin’s ARRW hypersonic missile can travel in the upper atmosphere at more than five times the speed of sound, or about 6,200 km/h. This provides hypersonic missiles the capability of reaching long-range targets in lesser time as well as keeping a stealthy trajectory.

American defense contractors are hoping to capitalize on the country’s growing need for hypersonic weapons. A string of successful and unsuccessful tests for hypersonic missiles has been observed in recent times as the Pentagon ramps up its effort to acquire a locally produced hypersonic weapon.

The United States is in a race with China and Russia to develop hypersonic weapons, seen by many to gain an edge over any adversary because of their speeds. The U.S. base defense giants like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, and Northrop Grumman have started to put a special emphasis on producing hypersonic weapons amid China and Russia’s growing success in the field.