US (& Allies) Hypersonic developments and missiles

But I am half serious
A while ago they have really cheered about how they successfully tested hypersonic missile, which turned out to be Standard 6 used in AShM role.
They have really said that.
60 years after that was a standard matter for Shtorm missile system, or Volna ...

Not sure if we talk about the same events TBH, but still they did what I said
Masturbating over something that was just a part of a regular show 60 years ago in the Soviet Navy is really extraordinary

As 404 shows every day SAM´s can be very good in destroying stuff on the ground.

The success of the US finally missile it to the target
https://www.eglin.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3240613/air-force-conducts-first-arrw-operational-prototype-missile-test/

Reality intrudes

The second test of the American hypersonic missile was only partially successful-BD

Tests of the American hypersonic missile AGM-183A ARRW (Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon) air-based are not going as smoothly as the Pentagon would like.
Breaking Defense writes about this, claiming that during the last test, not all the goals set were achieved.

It is also noted that the US Air Force command is silent about how successful the second full-fledged test of the ARRW prototype was on March 13, which was announced only on Saturday, March 25.

A US Air Force press release on the eve indicated that "several goals were achieved during the test," while the first test in December last year reported that "all goals were achieved," the publication says.

"The test completed several tasks, and the engineers and testers of the ARRW team are collecting data for further analysis," the release says smoothly.

The attempt of the Breaking Defense correspondent to get additional data on the test results from the representative of the US Air Force was not successful — the military department refused.

The US Air Force reported that on March 13, it conducted the second full-fledged test launch of the prototype of the AGM-183A hypersonic air-launched missile (ARRW).

According to the report, the B-52H Stratofortress bomber has released a fully operational ARRW prototype manufactured by Lockheed Martin. This was the second launch of the ARRW combat prototype, whose task was to comprehensively check the characteristics of weapons.

source: https://eadaily.com/ru/news/20...

Piss! Piss! Piss on Robinette's pants!

In the United States reported the failure of the test of a hypersonic missile, by Elizaveta Shishkova for VZGLYAD. 03.28.2023.

US Air Force Secretary announces failed latest test of hypersonic weapons.

The latest test of hypersonic weapons under the ARRW (Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon) program turned out to be a failure, said US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall during a speech to the House Appropriations Committee of the Congress.

According to him, the test passed "just now" and was not successful. Kendall explained that the military did not receive the expected data that was needed after the test, TASS reports.

Meanwhile, in January, the US conducted a successful test flight of a Lockheed Martin version of a hypersonic missile.

https://vz.ru/news/2023/3/28/1205097.html

Confirmation of failure.

OSINTdefender
@sentdefender
·
3h
U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall has announced that their recent Hypersonic Missile Test on March 13th utilizing Lockheed Martin’s AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon has once again Failed due to Data-Loss.

At least the plane didn´t crash.

Ooops, this wasn't in the plan   So, dump that product and go with the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile "concept" my highlight in the text. I assume that its main "role" is greasing the wheels of politics.



The US Air Force has announced plans to end the Lockheed Martin hypersonic weapons program.

Air Force Assistant Secretary for Acquisition Andrew Hunter confirmed the major development in testimony given to a House Armed Services subcommittee on Wednesday. He said the Air Force doesn't "currently intend to pursue follow-on procurement" of the weapon known as the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW).

Breaking Defense reported earlier that the Lockheed Martin-made ARRW might be in jeopardy, citing Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who told the House Appropriations defense subcommittee during testimony on the service's fiscal 2024 budget request this week that the March 13 test was "not a success."

   "The one we just had was not a success. We did not get the data that we needed from that test ... currently examining that, trying to understand what happened," Kendall told lawmakers.

   He was referring to the news last Friday of an ARRW test by the Air Force that only achieved "several" objectives but omitted any claims of success

Sources close to Bloomberg said the missile, released from a B-52H bomber off the southern coast of California, experienced data link transmitting issues during flight.

Assistant Secretary Hunter's testimony didn't clarify whether the Air Force is giving up on the Lockheed program because of the failure, or if it was already on the chopping block, but clearly the program has been troubled.

Kendall had suggested that possible further tests might determine the fate of the ARRW program. He noted the Air Force's other hypersonic program, the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), showed more promising results:

   "We see a definite role for the HACM concept. It's compatible with more of our aircraft. And it'll give us more combat capability overall. So, we're more committed to HACM at this point in time than we are to ARRW."

It is indeed embarrassing that the US (the largest military budget in the world) has yet to field any hypersonic missiles, while Russia has already used its hypersonic Kinzhal missiles multiple times in the conflict in Ukraine.

Since 2019, the Department of Defense has plowed billions of dollars into programs aimed at developing hypersonic missiles, as defense officials warned Russia and China are advancing in this field. However, the recent Air Force hypersonic missile test ended in failure, raising concerns about whether the US is falling behind in the hypersonic arms race.

Why is the US falling behind the hypersonic arms race?

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/usaf-admits-hypersonic-missile-test-failed

That was the USAF, how about the USN?

he U.S. Navy has awarded separate contracts to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to design and build competing prototypes to meet its requirement for an air-launched, air-breathing hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile. The service says this weapon is key to addressing increasingly advanced naval threats in contested environments in future major conflicts, such as a potential one against China in the Pacific, and that it must be in service by 2029.

The Navy's Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) announced the contract awards late on Tuesday. NAVAIR says the deals, which were formally inked on March 27, together have a total combined value of approximately $116 million, but it's unclear how much each company received.
An artist's conception of a hypersonic air-breathing cruise missile. Raytheon/Northrop Grumman Raytheon/Northrop Grumman

"The initial contracts to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin will provide technical maturation and development through preliminary design review of the propulsion system required for a carrier suitable hypersonic weapon system," according to a NAVAIR press release. "The contract period of performance for each award will end in December 2024 with each company's preliminary design review working towards a prototype flight test."

Rest of article at https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/navy-air-launched-hypersonic-anti-ship-cruise-missile-makes-big-move-forward

also included this re the USAF stuff I posted above

The Navy is hardly the only branch of the U.S. military seeking air-breathing missiles capable of flying at hypersonic or at least high-supersonic speeds. Raytheon, again in partnership with Northrop Grumman, notably won the Air Force's Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) competition in September 2022. HACM is a direct follow-on to HAWC that is seeking to craft a hypersonic cruise missile that will hopefully start being fielded in 2027.

"Russia has beaten us." Washington pointed to a serious threat, 04.01.2023.

MOSCOW, April 1 - RIA Novosti, David Narmania. The United States reported on the testing of a hypersonic missile. The flight went wrong. The Americans have not been able to create their own "new generation weapons" for more than two decades. About the main difficulties - in the material RIA Novosti.

Catch up with Russia and China

The launches of the prototype AGM-183A ARRW (as the rocket is called) took place on March 13. "The tests were not successful. We did not receive the data we need," said Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall.

Prior to this, the AGM-183A was tested in December and, according to the Pentagon , quite successfully. The prototype was dropped from a B-52H bomber, after which the solid-propellant engine turned on and dispersed the rocket to a speed of five times the speed of sound. At the end of the trajectory, the prototype was blown up in the air.

In general, last year was successful for the United States in the hypersonic program: flights in May and July were also without problems.

But the current fiasco rolls back the situation a year and a half ago - in 2021, all three launches turned into a failure. Because of this, Congress even cut funding by almost three times - from 308 to 115 million dollars.

Washington has been chasing hypersound for a long time - they started talking about it at the beginning of the 2000s. They created the DARPA Falcon HTV-2 project, started developing the X-51A Waverider cruise missile. But both programs were closed.

Now, in addition to ARRW, they are working on several more options for hypersonic weapons. But none of the samples has yet appeared in the army.

“Before, we didn’t have a locomotive for this technology. <...> There was no need. Now everything is different. We urgently need to catch up: Moscow and Beijing are ahead of us,” American Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfe said in November.

But you have to fork out. The Pentagon has requested $4.7 billion. According to the Congressional Budget Office, three hundred hypersonic missiles will cost about $18 billion over the next 20 years, a third more than the same number of medium-range ballistic missiles. And that's without taking into account development and testing costs.

Special technology

Hypersonic weapons, as you might guess, differ from conventional weapons primarily in speed.

However, the same Topol-M, which was put into service back in 1997, accelerates to several Mach numbers. But along a ballistic trajectory, which means that it can be calculated and shot down by air defense systems.

Hypersonic missiles are a much more difficult target. They do not just fly at a speed of more than five Mach numbers - they maneuver. Nothing will stop them.

In addition, this area is not limited by any international agreements. Although missiles can be equipped with nuclear warheads.

Race leaders

Russia is so far the only country officially armed with hypersonics. There is a kind of triad here.

Earlier than others, "Daggers" entered the service - in 2017. They are launched from aircraft. The carrier is usually the MiG-31K. There is an option with Tu-22M3M.

In combat, these missiles were first used in Syria on February 19 last year. Then in Ukraine : on March 22, an underground arsenal dating back to Soviet times was destroyed in the mountains of Ivano-Frankivsk region . Attacks on Ukrainian military infrastructure continue.

In December 2019, the Avangard was put on combat duty, capable of accelerating up to Mach 27. It has an intercontinental range. The controlled unit is launched with the help of a ballistic missile - the Sarmat ICBMs are designed for this.

According to the American portal Popular Mechanics , "Vanguard" takes warheads of two megatons - twice the size of the only American Minuteman III ICBM and 130 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

In August 2022, the Zircon, the world's first hypersonic anti-ship missile, was put into service. In January, the frigate Admiral Gorshkov, equipped with such weapons, entered combat service.

“The main thing is that even this one ship has significantly changed the balance of forces at sea, in the Northern Fleet, in our favor,” emphasizes Doctor of Military Sciences Konstantin Sivkov.

Such a frigate, according to him, can single-handedly disable an aircraft carrier or several ships. Therefore, Americans have something to worry about.

Adds a headache and China. The PLA does not yet officially have hypersonics, but ICBMs for such weapons entered the troops back in 2019. In particular, DF-17.

And the tests of the Chinese are much more successful. In 2021, a hypersonic glide unit - a glider - separated from the launch vehicle, flew around the globe and hit a conditional target with an accuracy of several tens of kilometers.

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, compared it to the Soviet Union launching Sputnik in 1957. For the first time in the 21st century, we are talking about the technological backlog of the United States in the field of security. Previously, only the USSR could deliver such troubles . Recently, two countries have already been able to do this.

https://ria.ru/20230401/giperzvuk-1861908221.html

It is not just about speed though... the Orcs have not been able to intercept Iskander despite Iskander only flying at mach 7 or so... S-300 and S-400 can easily deal with such targets... mach 1 is about 350m/s, so mach 7 is about two and a half kms per second, SA-12 can already deal with that, and S-300PMU would struggle because it can hit targets from 50m to 1.2km/s, but S-300PMU1 and newer can hit targets at up to 2.8km/s... and S-400 up to 4.8km/s.

The issue with hypersonic missiles only gets real when they have sensors on board that can detect enemy air defences and can manouver specifically to evade air defence missiles and systems which is what Iskander does and Tochka does not... and US Standard missile based missiles do not either.

As previously discussed, the Army has experienced a number of test delays and “no-tests” since 2021.
In addition, the DOD Inspector General has undertaken an evaluation “to determine whether the Army Long Range Hypersonic Weapon
and the Navy Conventional Prompt Strike Program Offices are meeting their weapons systems development and fielding timelines and
milestones.” Despite these events, the Army seemingly remains publicly committed to fielding its first operational prototype LRHW battery
by the end of FY2023. If the LRHW testing program is “at least six months behind schedule” as has been suggested, policymakers could
examine if the Army’s 2023 LRHW fielding plans are realistic and if additional testing to account for “no-test” events and past test failures
might be warranted.


From the Congressional Research Service


https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11991



Fielding some trucks with empty canisters isn´t the same as putting a functioning weapon system into service. 

Pentagon Nixes Test of First-Ever US Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, 09.07.2023.

Seeking to catch up with Russia and China, the Pentagon's Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon has a reported range of over 1,725 miles and travels at roughly five times the speed of sound.

The US military scrapped a test of what was meant to be the army's first hypersonic long-range missile in its arsenal. The Pentagon did not specify the reasons for the cancelation.

The Western media pointed out that this decision raises concerns whether the US will be able to compete in hypersonic warfare with Russia and China. Hypersonic LRMs have the ability to surmount traditional air defenses and can be armed with nuclear warheads.

The US Defense Intelligence Agency said in March that the US is losing the hypersonic race to China, and emphasized that this raises alarm bells concerning national security.

According to media reports, the Army’s 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Washington is going to operate the first battery of eight LRHW missiles when they are fielded.

In theory, the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon consists of a ground-launched missile equipped with a hypersonic glide body and associated transport, support, and fire control equipment.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230907/pentagon-cancels-test-of-first-ever-us-hypersonic-lrm-1113168315.html