The US abandons an essential hypersonic weapons program. Too many problems
The United States Air Force has announced it will not use Lockheed Martin's AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Reaction Weapon (ARRW) or "Arrow".
The announcement follows a failed test in early March, despite reaching a peak speed of five times the speed of sound in December, multiple news sources reported on Friday.
“The USAF will not purchase the weapon, but it will complete the tests,” head of procurement Andrew Hunter testified in writing to the House Air and Land Subcommittee on March 29.
“Although the Air Force does not currently intend to pursue the purchase of the ARRW once the prototyping program concludes,” Defense News said, citing written testimony from Hunter.
“There is an inherent benefit to completing all-round test flights to gather the learning and test data that will help inform future hypersonic programs.”
The weapon's inability to report in-flight performance data scuppered the second test flight of the prototype hypersonic missile, according to two people familiar with the findings, a Bloomberg report said on Tuesday.
The US Air Force did not mention the transmission problem or data loss that occurred during the March 13 exercise in a statement released March 24, which said the test “accomplished several objectives and the engineers and test pilots of the team are collecting data for further analysis. Meanwhile, this program does not go ahead.
At present, therefore, the only program that has remained active is the HACM, Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, carried out by Raytheon with Northrop, and which should take the form of a cruise missile that can be launched with the current structures from multiple platforms. A good project, but not enough for a power that would like to dominate the world…
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The article The US abandons an essential hypersonic weapons program. Too many problems comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/gli-usa-rinunciano-ad-un-essenziale-programma-per-le-armi-ipersoniche-troppi-problemi/ on Sat, 01 Apr 2023 16:08:41 +0000.