While available documents did not detail how many ARRW missiles the Air Force intends to buy, the request officially transitions the hypersonic weapon from its troubled development and testing phase and into formal procurement and production. The move comes after the Air Force considered cancelling the program last year after it completed its rapid prototyping effort in August 2024.

Made by prime contractor Lockheed Martin, ARRW is one of the two types of hypersonic weapons the Air Force’s is pursuing — the other being the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), under development by RTX-subsidiary Raytheon.

ARRW is a boost-glide missile that can be launched from larger aircraft such as the B-52 Stratofortress bomber, and like all hypersonics can fly at speeds of Mach 5 or faster and maneuver during flight.

The fate of ARRW has been up in the air since March 2024 when the Air Force announced it didn’t include any funds to procure the missiles in its budget request for fiscal 2025. The decision was not a surprise, as the program faced a series of setbacks during its development phase — including at least one failed all-up-round flight test that occurred in 2023.

At the time, Air Force leadership said they would pause the ARRW program to analyze the data gathered during its flight test campaign, while also shifting focus to the development of HACM.

But news that ARRW was no longer on the chopping block was first hinted at by Gen. David Allvin, the service’s chief of staff, earlier this month during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

“I will tell you that we are developing — and you’ll see in the budget submission, assuming it’s what we put forward — two different programs. One is a larger form factor that is more strategic [and] long range that we have already tested several times — it’s called ARRW. The other is HACM,” Allvin told lawmakers June 5.

The Air Force first awarded Lockheed Martin a contract worth up to $480 million to design and develop ARRW. Since then, the service has spent roughly $1.4 billion in research-and-development funds on the hypersonic weapon.

As for HACM, the Air Force is requesting $802.8 million in fiscal 2026 to continue the missile’s development, according to budget documents. The service received $466.7 million in FY’25 appropriations, and the increase in funds for this year are likely due to the program entering its flight test phase in the near future.

The Air Force intends to conduct five flight tests for HACM — two less than the service originally planned for — before the program begins rapid fielding efforts in fiscal 2027. The reduction in tests was caused by delays in nailing down the weapon’s hardware design, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office. 

Development of hypersonic missiles is considered a top priority for the Defense Department, especially as adversaries continue to advance their own weapons. Overall, the DOD is requesting over $3.9 billion in FY’26 across a number of programs at different stages of development, a defense official told reporters Thursday during a briefing at the Pentagon.

Along with the Air Force’s programs, those funds would also contribute to fielding the first operational battery of the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) — also known as Dark Eagle — by the end of FY’25 and continued development of the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) system.

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Air Force officials overseeing HACM told the Government Accountability Office that the program’s first design review was held in September 2024 — six months later than expected — because more time was needed to nail down the missile’s hardware design. As a result, the service will only have time to conduct five flight tests for HACM before it begins rapid fielding efforts in fiscal 2027.

“Program officials said that the delays will reduce the number of flight tests the program can conduct during the 5-year rapid prototyping effort from seven to five,” GAO said in its annual assessment of the Pentagon’s acquisition programs, published Wednesday. “These officials said that the program will still be able to establish sufficient confidence in the missile to declare it operational and to meet all the [middle tier of acquisition pathway’s] objectives with the reduced number of tests.”

Led by RTX subsidiary Raytheon, HACM is an air-breathing scramjet missile and one of the Air Force’s two main efforts to develop hypersonic weapons, which can fly at speeds of at least Mach 5 and are highly maneuverable mid-flight. Northrop Grumman is also on the program as a subcontractor that’s developing the scramjet engine.

Raytheon received a $985 million deal from the Air Force in 2022 to develop HACM under a middle tier of acquisition (MTA) contract, an alternative procurement pathway that requires systems to complete a rapid prototyping effort within five years. The company was later given a $407 million award in 2023 for additional work to enhance the HACM’s capabilities — bringing the contract’s total value to nearly $1.4 billion.

According to its budget request for fiscal 2025, the Air Force planned to mature HACM’s design and initiate flight test activities — including integration on the F-15E Strike Eagle and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, as well as all-up-round free flight testing of missile prototypes. The service intended to build 13 missiles during the rapid prototyping effort to use as “test assets, spares, and rounds for initial operational capability,” the GAO report noted.

Program officials told GAO that HACM’s first design review was delayed to allow for more time to finalize the missile’s hardware design and “validate an initial configuration of the system for use in the first flight test,” the report stated. Another review to certify the system’s “fully operational configuration for use in the final flight tests” was scheduled for sometime in 2025. 

An Air Force spokesperson declined to comment on the current status of HACM’s development, citing “enhanced program security measures.” Raytheon did not respond to DefenseScoop’s request for comment.

Furthermore, GAO said that Raytheon is now “projecting that it will significantly exceed its cost baseline” for HACM, although Air Force officials told the watchdog that removing two flight tests could offer some savings. The program’s development cost as of January 2025 was estimated at close to $2 billion — a two percent increase from the watchdog’s 2024 assessment of $1.9 billion, according to the new report.

HACM would not be the Air Force’s first hypersonic missile to face challenges during development. Its other program — the Lockheed Martin-developed AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) — had a rocky test campaign. At least one of the weapon’s flight tests was deemed unsuccessful, prompting the service to shift priority to HACM’s development.

Issues during ARRW’s testing led the service to axe the weapon’s procurement in FY’25 so the Air Force could reassess the program for future budget requests, casting doubt on ARRW’s future. However, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin recently revealed that the service has included funds to buy ARRW missiles in its upcoming fiscal 2026 budget request.

“I will tell you that we are developing — and you’ll see in the budget submission, assuming it’s what we put forward — two different programs. One is a larger form factor that is more strategic [and] long range that we have already tested several times — it’s called ARRW. The other is HACM,” Allvin said last week during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Although both ARRW and HACM are hypersonic weapons, they each have different propulsion systems that give them different characteristics. ARRW is a large boost-glide missile that uses a rocket motor to achieve hypersonic flight and is thus limited to being carried by bigger platforms, such as the B-52 Stratofortress bomber. On the other hand, HACM is a smaller cruise missile powered by an air-breathing jet engines, or scramjet, meaning it can be launched from more tactical aircraft like fighter jets.

Despite their differences, Air Force officials have previously stated that both ARRW and HACM are “complementary” to one another.

Moving forward, the Air Force is working with Raytheon to create a new schedule for HACM that still follows the five-year rapid prototyping timeframe mandated for MTA programs, GAO noted in the report. The government watchdog also said the Air Force has altered HACM’s transition strategy to support faster delivery of more missiles, while also improving the weapon’s design for large-scale manufacturing and expanding the industrial base’s capacity for production.

The service currently plans to use the rapid fielding effort in FY’27 to deliver missiles developed during HACM’s initial prototyping phase and then iterate on the weapon’s design. That work will inform a concurrent major capability acquisition pathway program the Air Force will start production for in fiscal 2029, according to GAO.

“The program office stated that based on global power competition and urgency to address threats, the Air Force changed the focus of the HACM program from a prototype demonstration to a program that would deliver operational capability in fiscal year 2027,” per the report. “The program stated that, with this shift, it is focused on meeting schedule as the priority and maintaining velocity toward fielding an operationally relevant capability — the minimum viable product that meets user-defined performance requirements — in fiscal year 2027.”

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Following a troubled flight testing campaign, the Air Force decided not to include any funding to procure ARRW in its budget request for fiscal 2025. At the time, officials said it would take time to fully analyze and understand data gathered during the test campaign before fully committing to putting more money toward the system’s development or fielding.

But comments made by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin on Thursday suggest the service has resolved to continue funding the ARRW program rather than end it.

“I will tell you that we are developing — and you’ll see in the budget submission, assuming it’s what we put forward — two different programs. One is a larger form factor that is more strategic [and] long range that we have already tested several times — it’s called ARRW,” Allvin said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Developing hypersonic missiles has been a top priority for the entire Defense Department as U.S. adversaries continue to mature their own technology. The weapons are able to reach speeds of Mach 5 or higher and are highly maneuverable in-flight, making them difficult for air defense systems to intercept.

And while the Air Force, Army and Navy each have respective hypersonic missiles development programs, all of the weapons so far have yielded mixed results during flight test campaigns.

After a successful all-up-round test for ARRW in late 2022, the Air Force conducted three additional tests in 2023 and a final one in 2024 — but declined to share any results, casting doubt on whether all objectives were met during the campaign.

In 2023, then-Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall admitted to lawmakers that ARRW’s second test in March of that year was deemed unsuccessful. As a result, he said the service intended to reevaluate the program as it finished flight tests, but would shift focus to its other hypersonic missile program, known as the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM).

Furthermore, a 2024 report from the Pentagon’s weapons tester revealed that ARRW’s test campaign was also challenged by a lack of available infrastructure and insufficient means to collect critical flight data. 

Now, both ARRW and HACM are “continuing to develop and moving beyond [research, development, test and evaluation] and getting into the procurement range in the very near future,” Allvin told lawmakers Thursday.

Under development by Lockheed Martin since 2018, ARRW is a boost-glide missile that uses a rocket booster to reach hypersonic speeds, meaning the weapon is large and can only be launched via very big aircraft like the Air Force’s B-52 Stratofortress bomber.

On the other hand, HACM is a smaller, air-breathing scramjet hypersonic missile that is compatible with more aircraft, including fighter jets. RTX was tapped to develop a prototype design for HACM in 2022, and the service was expected to conduct at least 13 tests between October 2024 and March 2027 before production decisions are made, according to the Government Accountability Office’s annual Weapon System Assessment report released last year.

“The Air Force plans to transition HACM to the major capability acquisition pathway at either development start or production start in 2027, depending on what capabilities the Air Force is willing to accept and whether production facilities are ready,” the GAO report stated.

The Air Force declined to provide additional details regarding ARRW’s fate until the FY ’26 budget is approved.

Lockheed Martin deferred specific questions to the Air Force, but a spokesperson told DefenseScoop that the company “has full confidence in the maturity and production readiness of ARRW hypersonic-strike capabilities. We continue partnering with the U.S. Air Force to meet the urgent needs of our warfighters.”

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The Pentagon announced the award in late December but few details were provided at the time. The contracting action is an addition to the nearly $1 billion awarded to Raytheon in 2022 to develop the air-launched hypersonic weapon. The new funds will allow the company to conduct supplementary research, development, test and evaluation work for the HACM program through 2028, an Air Force spokesperson recently told DefenseScoop. 

“After the initial contract award, the [Department of the Air Force] decided to initiate concurrent RDT&E efforts that will enhance capabilities of the missile,” the spokesperson said in an email. “These enhancements required additional scope, resources, and time than were provided in the initial [middle tier of acquisition] contract.”

Both the Air Force and Raytheon declined to provide specific details on the capability enhancements covered by the funding. The contract notice stated that $27 million from fiscal 2023 funds had been allocated to Raytheon at the time of the award.

The company initially received a $985 million deal from the Air Force for development work on HACM — an air-breathing hypersonic cruise missile — in 2022 for design, development and initial delivery of the missile by March 2027. While the contract modification’s deadline extends past that until December 2028, the Air Force spokesperson said the HACM program is still on track.

“This contract award does not reflect any changes to the department’s commitment to deliver HACM operational utility within the statutorily-required 5 year timeline for the use of the Middle Tier of Acquisition authority,” they said.

Hypersonic weapons are a top priority for organizations across the Defense Department. The missiles are able to fly at speeds of Mach 5 or higher and can maneuver as they fly through the atmosphere, making them much harder to detect and intercept compared to traditional ballistic missiles.

HACM is one of two significant hypersonic efforts under development by the Air Force. The other — known as the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) — has experienced several hiccups during flight testing, which has prompted the service to focus its efforts more closely on HACM as ARRW wraps up tests in 2024.

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The 412th Test Wing at Edwards Air Force Base in California conducted the second “all-up-round” flight test of the full prototype operational ARRW on Mar. 13 by releasing the missile from a B-52H Stratofortress bomber, Air Force Material Command said in a press release last week. The test focused on ARRW’s end-to-end performance and “met several of the objectives,” the release said, adding that engineers and testers “are collecting data for further analysis.”

However, on Tuesday Kendall stated that the test was unsuccessful and that the service now plans to reevaluate the program in its future budget requests.

“The one we just had was not a success. We did not get the data that we needed from that test. So, they’re currently examining that to try to understand what happened,” Kendall said while testifying to the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee. “We have two more test articles that we can use. And we’ll probably have to make a decision on the fate of ARRW after we complete the analysis and hopefully do those two tests.”

The Air Force is asking for $150 million in research and development funding for ARRW in its fiscal 2024 budget request in order to complete the rapid prototyping program and conduct flight tests of the weapon.

While recently released budget justification documents indicate R&D investments for ARRW will end after fiscal 2024, Kendall said officials will revisit the program’s funding as they build the budget requests for fiscal 2025.

Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for the program.

“Lockheed Martin is committed to developing hypersonic technology on an accelerated timeline to meet this critical national security need,” the company said in a statement to DefenseScoop when asked to comment on the recent test after Kendall’s remarks on Tuesday.

ARRW is a boost-glide missile that uses a rocket motor to propel the weapon to hypersonic speeds of Mach 5 or higher. Hypersonic missiles are also designed to be highly maneuverable in-flight, making them difficult for adversaries’ air defense systems to intercept.

The ARRW program has seen both progress and setbacks since the Air Force began pursuing the weapon. After repeatedly pushing the program’s timeline back, it was announced that the system could be operational as early as fall 2023, according to an Air Force Global Strike Command release in December.

ARRW is now in what Lockheed has referred to as an “extremely aggressive schedule” for development and testing. In December, the program conducted the first launch of a full prototype operational missile at Edwards Air Force Base — a successful flight test lauded as a major milestone in the Air Force’s pursuit of hypersonic capabilities.

While ARRW remains up in the air, Kendall told lawmakers that the Air Force is more confident in its other hypersonics program — the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM). The cruise missile differs from ARRW in that it will leverage a scramjet engine to achieve hypersonic flight rather than a boost-glide system.

“We see a definite role for the HACM concept,” Kendall said. “It’s compatible with more of our aircraft and it will give us more combat capability overall. So we’re more committed to HACM at this point in time than we are to ARRW.”

The Air Force plans to spend $1.9 billion over the next five years to research and develop HACM, including $381.5 million in fiscal 2024, according to budget justification documents.

In September, the service awarded Raytheon Technologies a $985 million contract to develop and demonstrate HACM by operationalizing prototype designs the company completed as part of the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment (SCIFiRE). The program was part of a multi-year, bilateral project arrangement with Australia.

Updated on March 28, 2023, at 7:05 PM: This story has been updated with a statement from Lockheed Martin.

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The 412th Test Wing based at Edwards Air Force Base conducted the event off the coast of Southern California on Dec. 9, Air Force Materiel Command said in a press release on Monday.

“A B-52H Stratofortress [bomber] successfully released the first All-Up-Round AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon [ARRW],” per the release. “This test was the first launch of a full prototype operational missile. Previous test events focused on proving the booster performance. Following the ARRW’s separation from the aircraft, it reached hypersonic speeds greater than five times the speed of sound, completed its flight path and detonated in the terminal area. Indications show that all objectives were met.”

During a Mitchell Institute podcast released in August, Brian Schappacher, Lockheed Martin’s deputy program manager for the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, noted that the program was facing an “extremely aggressive schedule” for development and testing.

Lockheed has been working on the system as part of a rapid prototyping program.

In a statement Monday, Brig. Gen. Jason Bartolomei, armament directorate program executive officer, noted that the ARRW team successfully designed and tested the air-launched hypersonic missile in a five-year time period — which by Defense Department standards is a short timeline for new cutting-edge weapon systems.

The ARRW could be operational as early as fall 2023 and will be considered for rapid production, according to a Dec. 4 Air Force Global Strike Command release. However, it’s unclear if the service will fully commit to the system.

The weapon is designed to enable the U.S. to hold “fixed, high-value, time-sensitive targets at risk in contested environments,” according to the Air Force.

The ARRW is a boost-glide system that relies on a rocket to propel the weapon to hypersonic speeds greater than Mach 5. In addition to flying at extremely high speeds, hypersonics are expected to be very maneuverable and pose a major challenge to adversaries’ air defenses.

These types of weapons are a top modernization priority for the Pentagon as it seeks to compete with China. It is pursuing several projects in addition to the ARRW.

The Air Force has a Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) program that will use scramjet technology instead of a boost-glide system to achieve hypersonic flight. And the Army and Navy are pursuing the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) and Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS), respectively. The Army is aiming to field the LRHW next year, while the Navy plans to field CPS systems on destroyers by 2025.

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Lockheed has been developing the system for the Air Force as part of a rapid prototyping program to give the service greater ability to destroy high-value, time-sensitive targets and heavily defended land targets. Following the completion of the booster test series last month, the program is about to move into what officials call “all-up-round testing.”

“We have more missiles to build and more flight tests to get through and complete than we’ve had at any other time in this program, with the goal of reaching the early operational capability in 2023. So, there’s just a lot going on and it’s an extremely aggressive schedule,” Brian Schappacher, Lockheed’s deputy program manager for the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, said during a Mitchell Institute podcast released on Saturday.

“That keeps me up at night, just making sure that we can — we can meet all of those commitments,” he said, adding that the flight test program has been structured so that each subsequent test is “a little harder” than the previous one.

The ARRW is a boost-glide system that relies on a rocket to propel the weapon to hypersonic speeds greater than Mach 5. The most recent test series, which is now completed, was mainly focused on validating the performance of the booster, according to Schappacher.

“Now we’re moving into what we call the all-up-round test series … which is end to end,” Schappacher said. “We’re still going to focus on booster performance, of course, but we’re going to shift some focus onto the — some additional focus onto the glider performance.”

Hypersonic missiles are expected to fly at extremely high speeds with great maneuverability. The performance requirements create major challenges for weapons designers and engineers who must create a system that can survive in those extreme operating conditions.

Schappacher didn’t announce a start date for the all-up-round testing. In a press release July 13, the Air Force said it will begin “later this year.”

During the most recent booster test on July 12 off the coast of California, the platform reached hypersonic speeds after being launched form a B-52 bomber and “primary and secondary objectives were met,” according to the release.

“This was another important milestone for the Air Force’s first air-launched hypersonic weapon. The test successfully demonstrated booster performance expanding the operational envelope. We have now completed our booster test series and are ready to move forward to all-up-round testing later this year,” Air Force armament directorate program executive officer Brig. Gen. Heath Collins said in the release.

Despite the aggressive test schedule and the 2023 target date to achieve early operational capability, Schappacher said he’s “confident that we’re gonna be able to get there.”

However, questions remain about the ARRW’s future even if the all-up-round testing is successful.

“We haven’t made the decision on what do we do when the current demonstration program finishes,” Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Andrew Hunter told reporters July 16 at the Royal International Air Tattoo just days after the most recent successful flight test of the system, according to Breaking Defense.

“What we’re looking at is our weapons mix and our munitions mix for our highest priority operational problem sets which are tied to the pacing threat, and that’s what’s really driving decision-making,” Hunter said. “You obviously don’t wouldn’t buy something that doesn’t work. But even if it does work … it’s got to be the right contribution to the overall weapons mix.”

The Pentagon is pursuing several hypersonic weapons projects in addition to the ARRW. The Air Force has a Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) program that aims to use scramjet technology instead of a boost-glide system to achieve hypersonic flight. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been testing scramjet technology as part of its Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) initiative.

Meanwhile, the Army and Navy are pursuing their own platforms known as the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) and Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS), respectively. The Army is aiming to field the LRHW next year, while the Navy plans to field CPS systems on destroyers by 2025.

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