Our First Glimpse Of The Air Force's Hypersonic Cruise Missile

Table Of Content

• Australia unveils ‘historic’ defense boost to 2.4% of GDP in decade, but critics say too little, too late
• F-35 Program Says GAO Report Title Misleading; Sustainment Costs Coming Down
• The World’s First Hypersonic Cruise Missile Will Fly 20 Times Faster Than the Competition
• ROC-X – The solution to organic precision strike capabilities

Specific details about the Raytheon/Northrop Grumman design that was tested under HAWC and the one that the two companies are now developing under HACM are limited. Kwajalein Atoll is a U.S. government test site in the Marshall Islands—an independent country. The atoll supported several atmospheric nuclear tests in the 1950s, and is now part of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site.

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Posted: Sun, 18 Jun 2023 04:00:00 GMT [source]

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The US Air Force (USAF) has awarded a contract to Raytheon Missiles & Defense and Northrop Grumman team for the first hypersonic attack cruise missile (HACM). Delivery of the first hypersonic attack cruise missile capability with operational utility is expected by 2027. This two-stage design concept is also one that has been utilized in the development of other air-breathing hypersonic test vehicles in the past. This includes Boeing's aforementioned HyFly 2 and that company's missile-like scramjet-powered X-51 Waverider hypersonic test vehicle. In the foreground of the picture, seen at the top of this story, is what appears to be a previously unseen hypersonic air-breathing cruise missile design. At Mach 2.9, the Onyx is fast, but nowhere near as fast as the Zircon, which is propelled to hypersonic speeds—in excess of Mach 5.

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In addition to the photos, another social media user on Twitter (above) pieced together several Notices to Airmen and Navigation Warnings in the vicinity of Kwajalein Atoll. Notices to Airmen, also known as NOTAMs, are meant to temporarily keep civilian aircraft out of a described area for a particular amount of time, such as a missile test. Navigation warnings, or NAVWARNs, similarly apply to sailors, commercial shipping, and private shipping. Together, the NOTAM and NAVWARNs issued cover not only the projected flight path of a missile from the launch point to Kwajalein Atoll, but the flight areas of special aircraft that would monitor the test—particularly the launch and terminal impact phases. The Air Force planning to integrate HACM on the F-15E and F/A-18F in FY25, budget documents say. The Air Force is moving forward with a new Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile as one of its top two hypersonic weapons programs, Weapons Program Executive Officer Brig. Gen. Heath Collins said in a recent interview.

The World’s First Hypersonic Cruise Missile Will Fly 20 Times Faster Than the Competition

The service is hoping to begin fielding a weapon of this type through its Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile program, or HACM, starting in 2027. Northrop Grumman is a technology company, focused on global security and human discovery. Our pioneering solutions equip our customers with capabilities they need to connect, advance and protect the U.S. and its allies.

In addition, "HACM offers a smaller form factor than ARRW for fighter integration and expanded bomber capacity, and thereby imposes cost on potential adversaries with additional complexity." The U.S. Air Force has offered the first peek at its secretive air-breathing hypersonic cruise missile. The service also looks to have given us our best, detailed look at a live example of its now-canceled AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon hypersonic missile. Russia is testing hypersonic cruise missiles—and launching them underwater from submarines. According to FY25 budget documents released by the service Monday evening, a timeline for the HACM project shows “AUR [all-up-round] free flight testing” planned to begin in the first quarter and continue through the second quarter of FY25. If HACM development continues to progress, the weapon could become the first scramjet-powered, air-launched hypersonic missile to be introduced into the Air Force’s inventory as early as 2027, the service said in a news release.

The test was carried out at the Reagan Test Site, an Army facility in the Marshall Islands. The U.S. Air Force on Sunday carried out what is expected to be the final test of the hypersonic AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon. All of this comes from pictures released today that were taken during what was described as a "hypersonic weapon familiarization training" event at Edwards Air Force Base in California yesterday. Under this contract, the Raytheon Missiles & Defense and Northrop Grumman team will deliver operationally ready missiles to the USAF. Russia is planning to launch its hypersonic Zircon anti-ship missile from underwater at some point this year, though the launch date seems to have been pushed back at least once. In the HACM program, an informed source said Raytheon’s approach of working toward “an operational missile from the beginning” was a winning strategy.

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This also suggests that a bomber can carry more HACMs than ARRWs, enabling a single plane to attack more targets in wartime. The Air Force and Australia teamed up in 2020 to develop air-breathing hypersonic cruise missile prototypes under a bilateral project arrangement called the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment, or SCIFiRE. As the name suggests, the HAWC is a concept weapon that won’t be directly loaded onto planes or bombers, but is more of a platform for building future hypersonic technologies.

Though the Zircon is thought to be armed with conventional explosives, it hardly matters. Hypersonic weapons such as the HACM can fly multiple times the speed of sound and can maneuver mid-flight, making them hard for enemies to track and shoot down. “China’s missile programs are comparable to top tier producers internationally, and China leads Russia with its hypersonic arsenal,” McCormick said.

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WASHINGTON — Raytheon beat out fellow defense giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin to win the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) contract, worth $985 million, the Air Force announced today. The development of HACM will allow the USAF to enhance interoperability with allies and partner nations and stay ahead of strategic competitors. It will be based on the companies’ performance in different stages, including HACM’s critical design review, qualification, integration, manufacturing and evaluation. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com.

U.S. defense leaders wanted to accelerate development of hypersonic weapons in response to similar weapons manufactured by Russia and China. Hypersonic weapons can fly faster than five times the speed of sound while maneuvering, making them difficult to track and shoot down. The Air Force plans to hire Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon to design a hypersonic cruise missile this fiscal year.

Because it operates at such high speeds, the engine uses an inlet to force in supersonic compressed air (ramjets only use subsonic air through the system) before it mixes with hydrogen fuel, allowing the engine to achieve Mach 5 speeds and beyond. This excessive speed makes hypersonic missiles exceedingly deadly, as they’re capable of outrunning most modern air defense systems (a doomsday scenario the U.S. is also trying to mitigate). HACM is a tactical weapon designed to be used on day one of a large-scale conventional conflict. “HACM will provide our commanders with tactical flexibility to employ fighters to hold high-value, time-sensitive targets at risk while maintaining bombers for other strategic targets,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown said in an Air Force statement last week.

It's unclear if the F-35 or Super Hornet will be able to lug the big HACM missiles with enough efficiency that it would make sense to integrate them with USN and USMC aircraft, though. The Navy is separately pursuing an anti-ship optimized hypersonic air-breathing cruise missile of its own through the Hypersonic Air-Launched Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare program, or HALO. Newly released pictures include the first time the USAF has offered a look at its hypersonic cruise missile design. The Air Force has awarded Raytheon Missiles & Defense a $985.3 million cost-plus-fixed fee contract to develop and build the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, or HACM, an air-breathing cruise missile intended to launched from fighter-sized aircraft. The Air Force said HACM will be an air-launched standoff weapon that can hit high-value targets in contested environments and could be fired from beyond the reach of enemy air defenses. Under the deal, the HACM program will take Raytheon’s prototype design and prepare it to be integrated into a fighter aircraft that could then be used in combat, the Air Force said in a release Thursday.

HACM is also leveraging past testing of Boeing's HyFly 2 experimental air-breathing hypersonic vehicle and work done through the U.S.-Australian Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE). Collaboration between the two countries will continue in HACM design and development, “including using Australian test infrastructure for the initial all-up round flight tests,” the Air Force said. A lack of sufficient infrastructure to test hypersonics has been a major hindrance for developing these weapons in the United States, industry officials told Pentagon leaders earlier this year. Lawmakers and DoD officials have sought to expand American testing capabilities to fix this. The US is building out a new satellite network to better track adversary hypersonic weapons, as well as more advanced interceptors to knock them down.

That translates to 11,509 miles per hour, or fast enough to circle Earth in about two hours. HACM is envisioned for use in conventional strike weapons on fighter and bomber aircraft, according to the Air Force Research Laboratory. It appears to be similar to, or the same as, a “solid rocket-boosted, air-breathing, hypersonic, conventional cruise missile” the Air Force solicited ideas for earlier this year. In a future war against an adversary with advanced air defenses, such as China, the weapon could be used to strike valuable targets well within those defenses and otherwise out of reach. A fighter armed with such a weapon could fly to the edge of where the adversary’s defenses could reach and then fire the weapon. Once the HACM’s scramjet pushes the aircraft to about Mach 5, it could then outrun and evade air defenses on its way to the target, without putting the fighter pilot at risk.