Air Force may revive shelved ARRW hypersonic program

The Air Force wants to revive its shelved AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW, hypersonic program — and perhaps move it into the procurement phase.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin told lawmakers in a hearing last week that the service wants to include funding for both ARRW and the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, or HACM, in the fiscal 2026 budget proposal.

“We are looking, and have in the budget submission — assuming it’s what we had put forward — two different [hypersonic] programs,” Allvin told the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday. “One is a larger form factor that is more strategic long-range that we have already tested several times. It’s called ARRW, and the other one is HACM.”

Hypersonic weapons are capable of traveling at more than five times the speed of sound and maneuvering midflight, making them harder to track and shoot down than conventional ballistic missiles and more capable of penetrating enemy defenses.

China and Russia have invested heavily in hypersonic research and touted their advancements, with Russia even using hypersonic weapons in Ukraine. Those nations’ successes have worried top lawmakers and Pentagon leaders and increased pressure on U.S. military services to produce their own hypersonic capabilities.

The Air Force once saw ARRW, a boost-glide weapon made by Lockheed Martin, as a promising option for developing hypersonic weapons that could catch up with China’s and Russia’s programs.

But after unsuccessful tests in late 2022 and early 2023, ARRW’s future was in doubt. Andrew Hunter, then-acquisition chief, told lawmakers in March 2023 that the Air Force did not plan to buy ARRW missiles after its prototyping phase ended, spelling major trouble for the program.

The Air Force’s budget request for fiscal 2025, which was released in March 2024, included no funding for procurement or research and development for ARRW. The service concluded the prototype phase for ARRW in 2024.

But in his comments to lawmakers last week, Allvin said the service wanted to move both ARRW and HACM beyond research and development and “into the procurement range in the very near future.”

“We are accelerating in our development not only of the technology, but of the procurement of the capabilities that it will create,” Allvin said.

Now that the Air Force has matured its hypersonic technology, it must focus on lowering costs and getting the systems into production, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told lawmakers in the same hearing.

“It’s got to be affordable,” Meink said. “We’ve got to be able to buy more than 10 of these things. A big focus right now is ramping up the production and lowering the cost so we can get enough of that kit to actually make a difference.”