The U.S. Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a nearly $700 million contract for the production and fielding of a hypersonic missile.
The service granted Lockheed the $694 million contract in late September as it moved the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW, from prototyping and flight testing to production, according to a Monday announcement.
“This is a turning point in our advanced weapons roadmap,” Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink, said in a release. “By moving ARRW from test to production, we’re providing our combatant commanders with a credible, high-speed strike weapon capable of penetrating the most advanced anti-access and area-denial systems.”
The contract, which was completed under the Defense Department’s Enterprise-Wide Agile Acquisition Contract, is another effort by the U.S. military to modernize the country’s Arsenal of Freedom, the statement says.
The ARRW is designed to accelerate to speeds greater than Mach 5 by using a solid-fuel rocket booster before releasing a hypersonic glide vehicle. The boost-glide hypersonic missile is meant to give the service the ability to strike heavily defended targets from a safe distance away, or standoff range, in a time-sensitive manner, the announcement states.
“Fielding ARRW enhances our ability to hold targets at risk anywhere around the world,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said in the release. “This hypersonic weapon provides the Joint Force a flexible and rapid response option for highly contested environments.”
The announcement did not say how many missiles Lockheed is expected to produce or specify its timeline for delivery, citing operational security risks.
The Air Force previously moved to halt the purchase of ARRWs in 2023 after its prototyping phase ended, following unsuccessful tests, and instead opted to focus on its other major hypersonic weapon program, the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile.
Then, two years later in 2025, the service’s then-Chief of Staff Gen. David Allen told Congress that the service intends to revitalize its ARRW program with new funding in the fiscal 2026 budget proposal after not including it in the fiscal 2025 budget request.
The service allotted roughly $387 million for the ARRW program in its fiscal 2026 procurement budget request, according to budget documents. For fiscal 2027, the Air Force boosted the program’s budget slightly with a request for $452 million, budget documents show.
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