The B-52H bomber was successfully released by a B-52H bomber off the coast of Southern California on Saturday and reached hypersonic speed, the Air Force said Monday, without giving further details about the test itself, such as flight duration or altitude. .
“This was a great achievement for the ARRW team for the arms company and our air force,” Brig said. Gen. Heath Collins, executive director of the BBC’s weapons program.
ARRW is a hypersonic weapon that uses a launch vehicle to accelerate the rocket to speeds exceeding Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. The hypersonic sliding vehicle is then detached from the amplifier and slides at high speed towards its target.
The Air Force has struggled with testing the AGM-183A ARRW in the past, and the program has suffered three flight test failures before this last success. Last month, the air force said anomalies in flight tests had delayed the completion of the weapon. The first full test of the rocket and launch vehicle was postponed until sometime in the next fiscal year, which begins in October.
One day before the test, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall acknowledged the problems the ARRW program was facing.
“The program has not been successful in research and development so far,” Kendall told the House of Representatives’ subcommittee on appropriations. “We want to see proof of success before we decide on a commitment to production, so we’ll wait and see.”
The Pentagon has stepped up its focus on developing hypersonic weapons after lawmakers worried the United States was lagging behind Chinese and Russian programs. Last year, China successfully tested a hypersonic weapon that orbited the globe before hitting its target. Most recently, Russia became the first nation to use hypersonic weapons in warfare when it fired its Iskander and Dagger missiles at Ukraine. The Pentagon said Russia had used between 10 and 12 hypersonic weapons since its invasion of Ukraine.
In mid-March, the United States successfully tested its concept of supersonic air-breathing weapons (HAWC), but remained silent to avoid escalating tensions with Russia as President Joe Biden was on his way to visit Europe.
HAWC was launched by a B-52 bomber off the West Coast in the first successful test of the Lockheed Martin system. An accelerator engine accelerates the rocket to high speed, at which point the breathing jet engine ignites and propels the rocket at a hypersonic speed of Mach 5 and above.
The test came days after Russia said it used its own hypersonic missile during its invasion of Ukraine, claiming it was aimed at an ammunition depot in western Ukraine.
Even with the increased focus on hypersonic weapons, the Secretary of the Air Force called for attention to their importance.
“What we want to look at is which is the most cost-effective combination of weapons,” Kendall told lawmakers. “There is certainly a role to play in hypersound in this, and we need to invest in it and buy them in some quantities, but there is still an open question in my mind about which is the most cost-effective mix.”
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