A quick start and an inglorious end
The Air Force wants its own hypersonic weapons even more than the Navy or the US Army. One of the manifestations of this desire was the conclusion of a contract for the creation of a non-strategic hypersonic cruise missile Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW). Recall that the corresponding agreement between the Air Force and the corporation was concluded on April 18, 2018. The contract value was $ 928 million. It provided for "design, development, manufacture, system integration, testing, logistics planning and ensuring the integration of all elements of hypersonic non-nuclear non-strategic airborne weapons into aircraft."
"This move is one of two directions for the creation of prototypes of hypersonic weapons, which are being implemented by the Air Force to accelerate hypersonic research and development," the bmpd blog quoted the US Air Force statement as saying. "The Air Force is creating prototypes to explore opportunities for further development and move these technologies forward as quickly as possible."
The intentions were more than serious, as, indeed, the funding (it was necessary to take into account that this is just an early stage). They wanted to teach the HCSW rocket to hit both stationary and mobile ground targets. The cruising speed was to be Mach 5 or more. The complex was supposed to be able to operate in conditions of countering air and missile defense systems, as well as electronic suppression.
HCSW wanted to provide a combined inertial-satellite guidance system. As for the carriers, they saw among them "several types of fighters and bombers." There are not so many options with strategic bombers - there are only three types of such machines at the disposal of the US Air Force. These are B-52H, B-1B and B-2 Spirit. As for fighters, the best option, if we talk about the carrier of hypersonic weapons, looked like the F-15E Strike Eagle fighter-bomber. This machine, we recall, was originally created for solving shock tasks, and it showed itself perfectly in this field.
However, now all this is already in the past. In February of this year, it became known that the US Air Force announced the curtailment of the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon project. In March 2020, Lockheed Martin must defend the preliminary project, after which all work on the program will cease. The reason is trivial - there was not enough money.
In the dry residue
Thus, now the US Air Force will finance only one project of hypersonic weapons - we are talking about the infamous Air Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) complex, which also appears under the designation AGM-183. We are talking about an airborne aeroballistic missile equipped with a detachable hypersonic unit with a Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) engine and capable, according to previously presented data, of a speed of approximately Mach 20. This is extremely high, even for modern hypersonic weapons.
Allegedly, back in March 2019, they carried out throw tests of the TBG engine, and on June 12, 2019, new tests took place, in which the B-52H strategic bomber performed a flight with a product mockup. According to media reports, a B-52H-150-BW S / N 60-0036 aircraft was used for this, which took part in many other tests.
As part of the June tests, no missile launches were carried out: in fact, it was about the initial stage of analyzing the compatibility of the B-52H bomber and the AGM-183 missile. The type of warhead is unknown. Although a number of media outlets point to the use of a nuclear warhead, the example of the canceled Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon says, rather, the opposite.
Whatever the warhead, the complex is of great interest, primarily for potential enemies of the Americans. As far as can be judged, no one has such systems now (the Russian "Dagger" is a different type of weapon).
Recall that the creation of ARRW is carried out under a $ 480 million contract issued to Lockheed Martin in August 2018. The work should be completed by December 2021: it will be carried out at an accelerated pace and, possibly, in the first half of the 2020s, the United States will receive a “full-fledged” air-launched hypersonic weapon.
This is what is known more or less precisely. If you "fantasize", then you can imagine the integration of the AGM-183 into a wide variety of aircraft complexes of the US Air Force, including fighter-bombers. And a gradual increase in the capabilities of the complex itself, including in terms of flight range. However, on this path, the Americans inevitably encounter difficulties that are relevant to absolutely any developer of hypersonic missiles: we are talking about the control and guidance of missiles at hypersonic speed under conditions of ultra-high temperatures. If the States can cope with such challenges, then the US Air Force's arsenal may soon indeed be replenished with deadly "conventional" weapons, which will be very, very difficult to resist.
by the way
Air Launched Rapid Response Weapon should become part of the American "hypersonic triad", because, as we noted above, new hypersonic systems want to receive not only the Air Force, but the Navy and the US Army. “In general, we can expect,” Viktor Murakhovsky, editor-in-chief of the magazine “Arsenal of the Fatherland” noted earlier, “that by the end of 2025 the United States will have two (most likely, and possibly three) hypersonic products of operational-tactical and medium-range, ready for serial production. The United States is not currently developing a hypersonic weapon with a nuclear warhead."
Indeed, if we look at the ground forces, we will see active work on the so-called Long Range Hypersonic Weapon or LRHW (previously they also used the designation Hypersonic Weapons System), which is a mobile, ground-based hypersonic complex. It will be a universal solid-propellant medium-range ballistic missile AUR (All-Up-Round), which has a universal guided maneuverable gliding hypersonic warhead Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB).
As a reminder, the US Navy recently announced plans to equip Virginia-class multipurpose submarines with C-HGB hypersonic glider missiles. In total, the Pentagon intends to spend one billion dollars on research and development under the program in the 2021 fiscal year.
