Air Force plans more ARRW testing while building air-breathing scramjets

摘要

The Air Force's armament directorate is planning more tests of its boost-glide hypersonic Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon while also looking to establish new industry partnerships to support development of scramjet-powered munitions like the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile. ARRW, built by Lockheed Martin, flew on a B-52 for its final captive-carry evaluation in August, and now the Air Force is gearing up for the first experimental booster flight in the coming months. The service is also preparing its hypersonic sled testing program at Holloman Air Force Base, NM, having begun preliminary rocket tests last year. "All that is in line to get to an all-up-round ARRW flight test in the springtime," Brig. Gen. Heath Collins, the Air Force's program executive officer for weapons, told Inside Defense in an Oct. 22 interview, adding the system could become a program of record shortly afterwards. "While it's a prototyping program, the team has really pursued and Lockheed Martin has pursued building it with the same skills, tools and documentation as a full production program would be and so that line is very mature to make a quick transition into a production program," he said. "We will be able to make a transition pretty soon after we do successful flight tests." ARRW, according to Collins, is "leading the Air Force and leading the [Defense] Department on hypersonics," though he's interested in exploring scramjet-powered weapons too. The one-star general referred to boost-glide and air-breathing vehicles as "complementary" but indicated it's not clear yet what mixture of the two the service might pursue. "I think they each bring different things to the game," Collins said. "I think we need to learn a lot more before ... we really understand what [does] the loadout look [like] in the future. Air-breathing does allow us to get to a smaller size, so it may actually open up the inventory of platforms that air-breathing, scramjet-based hypersonics could go off."