Commentary
On March 28, the Air Force admitted that the March 13 test of Lockheed Martin’s AGM-183 air-launched rapid response weapon (ARRW) was a failure. This failure comes after four years and billions of dollars of taxpayer money sent to Lockheed Martin to develop hypersonic weapons.
And this failure comes in the context of Russia’s recent successful use of its own hypersonic missiles in the Russia–Ukraine war and highlights the fact that, unlike China, Russia, and perhaps even Iran and North Korea, the United States has yet to develop a fieldable hypersonic missile.
But before proceeding further, it’s worth reviewing what we mean by hypersonic missile. After all, since 1957, with the successful launch of the first Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the United States has had missiles that greatly exceed Mach 5 velocities, which is the threshold for what’s defined as hypersonic velocity. In fact, ICBMs can reach velocities of 15,000 miles per hour, about Mach 23. The difference is that while ballistic missiles fly at hypersonic speeds much greater than Mach 5, they largely follow a ballistic (parabolic) trajectory with very little ability to deviate from that ballistic trajectory. And they typically fly above or what’s near to the edge of what’s considered space (about 60 miles in altitude)….