The current status of the US hypersonic missile
What is the delay with development?
Hypersonic Missile in Flight Concept Rendering.
May 3, 2023
China and Russia, the biggest threats to America, currently have hypersonic missiles in their arsenal. Hypersonic missiles can be armed with or without a nuclear warhead, and can go past speeds of Mach 5 and can actively move while in flight to strike the target. China has a land-based anti-ship hypersonic glide missile, and Russia has an air-launched anti-ground hypersonic missile.
What about the U.S?
The United States awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin in regards to developing an air-launched hypersonic glide missile. The AGM-183a Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) is an air-to-ground missile that has a boosting stage and a glide stage.
In 2018, the Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin the contract for developing a hypersonic missile. The contract was worth $480 million.
Testing began in 2021, and there were seven tests run from 2021 to 2023. The first couple of tests were successful, but later on, tests began to fail according to the Air Force. Recently, they ended the contract with Lockheed Martin, and made the decision to not purchase the AGM-183a ARRW.
The reason why the AGM-183a ARRW had problems was because of how rushed it was. China and Russia released their hypersonic missiles in 2017 and 2019 respectively. With the US not having the ability to do the same, they rushed the process to acquire one.
Congress saw a deficit in the military, and so the military tried to solve that deficit. Lockheed Martin moved fast to develop one. All within 2-3 years. That’s a short amount of time for such a weapon to be developed.
In the end though, neither the government nor the military are to blame for rushing the missile, because they were responding to the threat of other nations having a superior weapon than them.
What does this mean for the US? Well, the US may not have hypersonic missiles currently operational, but they are currently having companies continue to proceed in developing one. Instead, they have lasers in operation.
These lasers can instantaneously destroy any object hurling at a carrier strike group. The US invested in a different kind of technology, but they aren’t far behind in the hypersonic race.
