Air Force B-52 Breaks Through With Live Fire of a Hypersonic Weapon

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

Not a moment too early, the US Air Force has successfully fired off an air launched hypersonic weapon from a B-52, marking a massive breakthrough in ongoing US efforts to keep pace with Russian and Chinese hypersonic weapons testing and development.

A U.S. Air Force B-52H Stratofortress successfully released an AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) off the Southern California coast, May 14, demonstrating a new ability to attack air and ground targets at paradigm-changing speeds with precision.

“Following separation from the aircraft, the ARRW’s booster ignited and

burned for expected duration, achieving hypersonic speeds five times greater

than the speed of sound,” an Air Force statement said.

In development for many years, the ARRW weapon brings new dimensions to air attack by enabling high-speed surprise attacks against enemy ships, aircraft and ground targets.

As a boost-glide weapon, the ARRW skips off the upper boundaries of the earth’s atmosphere before using its speed of descent to propel itself down onto a target. The Air Force decision to buy the weapon in 2022 suggests that the weapon is fast reaching new levels of maturity as it progresses toward operational service. This successful firing would seem to indicate that developers have managed to address certain challenges known to be central to achieving successful hypersonic flight.