The air force still has enough time to wrap up tests of its first hypersonic
missile and begin production by the end of the fiscal year, the services
program executive for weapons believes.
"However hitting that milestone will depend on how quickly the service can
figure out the issue that caused the december 15th booster test of the
AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) to fail before launch,"
Brigadier General Heath Collins told breaking defense in a january 13th
interview.
"We have a bunch of test windows aligned and scheduled on the range
throughout the year. The next one is in a couple months," he said.
We are really focusing on getting the failure review board done, the
corrective actions completed and trying to make sure we're ready for that
next test window.
In a december 20th statement the air force said an unknown issue caused the
launch sequence to be aborted before the ARRW booster could be released. After working through the holidays the program office is making progress on
figuring out what prompted the failure, collins said.
The air force has requested 161 million dollars this fiscal year to buy the
first 12 ARRW missiles from manufacturer Lockheed Martin. However it remains
to be seen whether congress will grant the full amount.
The house appropriations committee recommended a 44 million dollars cut from
the program. essentially cutting the funds needed for the four all up rounds
required to declare early operational capability, due to concerns that the
program had become increasingly delayed and compressed increasing the
concurrency risk to the first production lot of weapons.
Should the prototyping flight tests result in minimal discoveries, the
committee supports the use of these funds to procure missiles above the
eight funded in this recommendation by utilizing buy to budget authority,
the committee wrote.
The senate appropriations committee went further recommending 80 million
dollars cut to the program due to funds being early to need.
Air force secretary frank kendall has also raised questions about the
service's existing hypersonic programs, saying during a center for a new
american security event on wednesday that we have to be careful about not
mirror imaging the potential threats, particularly China.
Over the past couple decades, china has developed and fielded crews and
ballistic missiles that can be launched from the air, sea and ground on
mass, Kendall said.
With the us military and its allies bringing on more capable defenses for
their platforms, China is moving on to hypersonic weapons that can prosecute
these more difficult targets.
While kendall did not mention the ARRW program specifically he said that not
enough work has been done by the air force to understand where its
investment in hypersonic weapons can bear the most fruit.
"We don't have the same targets that china is worried about, so we have to
think about what's most cost effective for us," he said.
"And while i do think there is a role for hypersonics in that mix and i
think we should continue with and proceed with developing and fielding
appropriate hypersonics. I think we have to look very carefully at the
targets that that were interested in and at the most cost effective way to
deal with them," he added.
Despite the issues in testing collins said he remains confident in the arrw
program and pointed out that previous failures were not the result of design
flaws.
