- Signs point to the U.S. Air Force conducting a crucial hypersonic weapon test within the Pacific.
- A B-52 bomber armed with a live ARRW missile was photographed on Guam this week.
- ARRW was canceled last yr, but there are so few hypersonic weapon tests that any test is beneficial.
A U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber was photographed last week on Guam with an interesting sidekick: a live AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW). The bomber is believed to be involved in a secret final test of the weapon that will even have already taken place. The ARRW was certainly one of several Mach 5+ weapon systems pursued by the Pentagon, and although recently canceled, the Department of Defense is ending testing anyway to grab whatever data it will probably on the performance of so-called hypersonic weapons.
Guam to “Kwaj”
Indications that a test could be forthcoming appeared on social media and within the Air Force’s media stream over the weekend. The Defense Visual Information Service published several photos of a B-52H Stratofortress heavy strategic bomber carrying a live ARRW missile. The bomber was positioned at Andersen Air Force Base on the U.S. territory of Guam within the Pacific. As one observer on social media noted above, similar photos were taken at Edwards Air Force Base in 2023 before an analogous test.
Along with the photos, one other social media user on Twitter (above) pieced together several Notices to Airmen and Navigation Warnings within the vicinity of Kwajalein Atoll. Notices to Airmen, also referred to as NOTAMs, are supposed to temporarily keep civilian aircraft out of a described area for a specific period of time, equivalent to a missile test. Navigation warnings, or NAVWARNs, similarly apply to sailors, business shipping, and personal shipping. Together, the NOTAM and NAVWARNs issued cover not only the projected flight path of a missile from the launch point to Kwajalein Atoll, however the flight areas of special aircraft that might monitor the test—particularly the launch and terminal impact phases.
Kwajalein Atoll is a U.S. government test site within the Marshall Islands—an independent country. The atoll supported several atmospheric nuclear tests within the Nineteen Fifties, and is now a part of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site. Today, the atoll is used as a bullseye for a wide range of missile tests, particularly Minuteman III missiles launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Broken Arrow
The AGM-183A ARRW was certainly one of several hypersonic missile programs that the U.S. government initiated after Russian and Chinese programs were publicized within the mid-2010s. The ARRW was designed as a high speed conventional missile that might quickly take out mobile and other time-sensitive targets. In 2018, Flight Global claimed that the weapon reaches speeds of as much as Mach 20, or 15,345 miles an hour.
ARRW suffered from developmental issues, including numerous failed tests. The Air Force canceled the missile in 2023, but made the choice to perform the last two tests and launch the ultimate two developmental missiles. Hypersonic, high mach atmospheric flight is a comparatively under-researched field, and the more data, the higher. While hypersonic flight was first achieved within the late Nineteen Fifties, and today’s ballistic missiles re-enter the atmosphere at Mach 18, latest hypersonic weapons fly at high mach numbers entirely within the atmosphere. This subjects them to incredible levels of friction and pressure that were, until recently, not fully understood.
After ARRW’s cancellation, the Air Force forged ahead as a substitute with the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM). In 2023, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall compared the 2 weapons, and stated HACM was “compatible with more of our aircraft and it would give us more combat capability overall” than ARRW. HACM is a smaller missile that will be carried by fighter jets, while ARRW was so large it could only be carried by bombers. HACM can be believed to have a shorter range, owing to its smaller size. This also suggests that a bomber can carry more HACMs than ARRWs, enabling a single plane to attack more targets in wartime.
Waiting for a Test
Although there are clear signs and portents of an ARRW test, no person outside of the U.S. government knows when it would happen… or if it’s already happened. The Air Force typically publicizes tests inside 72 hours of their happening, so we’re inside the envelope of a test that took place earlier within the week. If it hasn’t happened yet, the clock is ticking—the NOTAMs and NAVWARNs each have expiration dates.