The Air Force’s Hypersonic Missile Just Flunked a Key Test...Again

This incident marks the fourth hypersonic missile failure in four years.

edwards air force base, calif june 12, 2019 b 52 out of edw carries arrw imv asset for its first captive carry flight over edwards air force base us air force photo by christopher okulaU.S. AIR FORCE
The AGM-183A hypersonic weapon failed yet another test this week, marking the fourth hypersonic test failure in two years.
The weapon, known as ARRW, is supposed to fly at speeds in excess of Mach 5.
This latest test involved launching the missile from a B-52H bomber.
The Air Force's hypersonic weapons program took another hit last week after a failed test of its AGM-183A missile. The missile booster—designed to accelerate the weapon to speeds in excess of Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound)—failed to ignite, causing the missile to fall into the sea. The incident marks the fourth hypersonic weapon test failure in two years.

Last week's test took place at Point Mugu Sea Range, located off the coast of southern California. The test, known as ​​"Booster Test Vehicle 1b," involved releasing the hypersonic weapon from a B-52H Stratofortress bomber. At first, the trial seemed to be going well, the Air Force explains in a press release:

The missile cleanly separated from the aircraft and successfully demonstrated the full release sequence including GPS acquisition, umbilical disconnect and power transfer from the aircraft to the missile. The missile also demonstrated fin operation and de-confliction maneuvers which ensures a safe operation for the aircrew.
Afterward, the rocket booster was supposed to ignite, accelerating the missile to Mach 5 speeds, but it failed to do so. The missile presumably fell into the Pacific Ocean.

The AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) is a conventional hypersonic weapon. Generally, they're designed to catch fleeting targets, like a missile launcher or a surface-to-air missile radar, before they safely redeploy.

Hypersonic weapons can also overwhelm air defenses by traveling faster and higher than existing defenses can intercept. However, there's an important caveat to that: hypersonics actually slow down for much of their flight, gliding unpowered for hundreds of miles at dramatically reduced speeds.

The Army envisions ARRW as a weapon that kicks down the enemy's doors during an American air offensive. A single B-1B bomber can carry as many as 31 ARRWs, targeting enemy air bases, radar sites, and air defense missiles. So, an air strike involving just a third of the Air Force's 45 B-1B bombers could theoretically deliver as many as 465 hypersonic weapons at once, a devastating strike that could hamstring an enemy's ability to fight back against successive waves of F-15EX Super Eagles, F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, other tactical aircraft, and low-flying cruise missiles.

Hypersonic weapons like ARRW can blast a path through enemy air defenses in wartime, allowing more detectable aircraft like F/A-18E/F Super Hornets to close in with their targets.
IAN HITCHCOCKGETTY IMAGES
This is the second failed AGM-183A test in four months. In April 2021, a booster test failed when the missile did not release from the B-52 carrying it. Meanwhile, the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) failed two recent tests, one in June 2020 and another in December 2020.

It hasn't all been failure, though. The Air Force deemed a test of the ARRW's warhead earlier this month a success. And a previous set of captive-carry tests that merely involved attaching a missile to the B-52 and verifying its airworthiness were also a success.

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Hypersonic weapons are notoriously difficult to develop. For one thing, hypersonics face incredible physical stresses while traveling through the atmosphere at Mach 5+ speeds. Friction with the surrounding air also heats the surfaces of the missile: at Mach 5, a hypersonic weapon's leading edges can reach 3,272 degrees Fahrenheit. The weapons can even generate a sheath of radio-blocking plasma waves that can interfere with the weapon's ability to receive course navigation obstructions

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Still, recent test failures have taken place before the weapons can even face those challenges. Booster failures, "involuntary separations" from the aircraft, and "dumb mistakes" have all prevented ARRW and HAWC from flying at their designed speeds. For what it's worth, ARRW is expected to enter service by 2030.


https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a37182350/air-force-hypersonic-missile-fails-again/

Hmm

The weapon has a mind of it's own...

Not a failure in its entirety, it's more of a learning process. Noting the limits of theories in reality and making adjustments.

It was recorded that the missile did not release from the bomber aircraft. But now it was cleanly released and even did maneuver, just that it didn't ignite. Hence, it's easy to go back to the drawing board to troubleshoot and possibly fix it.
It's just a learning process, common with Engineering testings