While the Air Force released scant details about the latest test of its AGM-183 Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon late last week, Secretary Frank Kendall told a Congressional panel it was “not a success”—and given ARRW’s checkered test history overall, Kendall indicated the service may shift focus ...
Munitions
In need of faster and greater surge weapons production capacity, the Air Force is looking to new technologies for new munitions, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. said. More weapons capacity may mean less efficiency, he acknowledged.
The Air Force's ARRW hypersonic missile would cost about $15 million per shot across a production run of 300 missiles, but that’s a third of the cost of the Army's ground-launched hypersonic missile, the Congressional Budget Office said. The CBO relied on open sources to ...
The Air Force's AGM-183A ARRW hypersonic missile is outrunning its test plan and evaluation tools, and the Air Force needs to get a test plan approved by the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation to assure the weapon delivers what's needed, the DOT&E said.
The inability to rapidly replace munitions being provided to Ukraine should be a “flashing red light” that the industrial base needs rethinking, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said on an American Enterprise Institute webcast. The U.S. is "clearly not ready" for a war over Taiwan, he ...
The Air Force’s munitions roadmap is meant to take a comprehensive view of service weapons needs, focused on the next five years but taking a longer view, as well. Modularity may be a hallmark of the future weapons inventory, the service’s munitions PEO said.
A test flight of the first all-up AGM-183 ARRW hypersonic missile was a deemed a success, the Air Force said. The test marks three successful flights in a row for the missile, which suffered a series of failures in 2021.
The U.S. still lags China and Russia in development and deployment of hypersonic weapon systems, and it will take a huge investment in education, test capacity and manufacturing capabilities to catch up, experts and members of Congress said in a streaming seminar broadcast by The ...
Fresh off a meeting of the national armaments directors of NATO and the European Union, Pentagon acquisition and logistics chief William A. LaPlante said the allies and partners are moving toward not simply interoperable munitions, but “interchangeable” as well. The 45 directors met to discuss ...
