When in March 2018, in the middle of the Russian presidential campaign, the president and candidate V.Putin announced the entry of the Kh47MZ Kinzhal airborne hypersonic missile, launched from a specially modified MIG31, and capable of hitting targets at more than 2000 km, the United States, like all Westerners, became aware of the delay accumulated in this area compared to Russia and China.
The Pentagon, then led by General Mattis, reacted promptly, and with astonishing lucidity, by launching two programs intended to quickly make up for this delay. The first program was the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon, HCSW, with a budget of $280 million, and entrusted to Lockheed-Martin, with the participation of many other manufacturers and DARPA. Its objective is to design hypersonic equipment capable of reaching fixed or mobile targets, of carrying a military load “defined by the government”, therefore potentially nuclear, and based on technologies already developed, but not yet having gave rise to military integration.
The second project, the Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW, has a budget of $480 million, and was also entrusted to Lockheed-Martin, as well as to a selection of industrialists, again with the support from DARPA. Unlike the HCSW, the ARRW, whose program has already been named AGM183a Arrow, must design a new generation hypersonic system, based on technologies that have not yet been made reliable, and must reach the speed of mach20. Its vocation, carried by the name of the program, will be above all strategic.
The simultaneous dual approach to the problem, with relatively close timetables (first flight 2021/2022 and entry into service 2025), demonstrates a profound paradigm shift at the Pentagon which, under the influence of General Mattis, has profoundly modified its objectives technological, sometimes crazy, for shorter, more realistic, and much better controlled programs. It also makes it possible to quickly get back to technologies in use and development in Russia, with the HCSW equivalent to the Kinzhal, and the ARRW having performances at the level of the Tzirkon, and missiles under development in Moscow.
In accordance with the schedule, on June 12, 2019, the integration tests of the AGM183A missile of the ARRW program began on the Californian Edwards base, a B52 having taken off with an inert AGM183A missile to evaluate its behavior in flight, the ARRW having to be , also airborne.