Weekly Military Review: The Death of the U.S. Hypersonic Weapons by the "Axe Gang" and the "158 Family"

[Text/Author: Special Commentator Yankee of Guancha Network]

This week brought shocking news from the hypersonic circle. The U.S. Navy's highly anticipated "Hypersonic Air-Launched Offensive (HALO)" anti-ship missile project was officially canceled on April 10 due to "budget limitations leading to performance failing to meet targets on time."

"When HALO is led to its execution, it will surely think back to that spring 25 years ago when 'Fast Hawk' was terminated for overspending by $7 million."

28 years ago, when Boeing had just absorbed McDonnell Douglas, it wasn't the same Boeing as today. Riding high, it had a formidable team of generals, but upon hearing the U.S. Navy's desire for a high-speed missile better suited for time-sensitive target strikes than the Tomahawk, it offered a series of combined ramjet power solutions previously developed with industry giants like Pratt & Whitney. It boasted that the final product would be a "700-pound payload/700-nautical-mile range" "short and fast" missile that could fit into an MK41 vertical launcher.

Smelling the sweet smell of opportunity, the U.S. Navy awarded Boeing an $8 million "low-cost missile system" advanced technology demonstration contract, requiring completion within 36 months, by March 2000, with plans to award a practicalization stage contract afterward. The Navy hoped to begin equipping this temporarily named "Fast Hawk" 4x speed cruise missile by 2005.

The first year after the "marriage" was quite sweet. Leveraging Boeing's prior technical accumulation in this field, the overall Fast Hawk plan was quickly determined. Its overall layout was very bold, adopting a wingless articulated design to maximize the use of space inside the MK41 vertical launcher; however, to achieve cost-effectiveness, most subsystems of Fast Hawk selected off-the-shelf products, including using relatively low-cost and easily machinable Inconel alloy (a type of nickel-chromium alloy) instead of titanium alloy for heat-resistant materials, appropriately sacrificing extreme specifications while striving towards the post-Cold War direction of "affordable usage."

Overall layout during the Fast Hawk technology demonstration phase: the front section is the fuel tank and warhead, with the aft booster/ramjet combustion chamber connected via a universal joint for "thrust vector control."

In October 1998, the U.S. Navy Science and Technology Working Group selected Fast Hawk as the "most highly regarded naval advanced technology demonstration contract of the FY97." According to the plan, the first prototype was scheduled to be assembled and tested for flight in March 1999. However, during the three-day "Desert Fox" operation by the Anglo-American coalition against Iraq in December 1998, the U.S. Navy launched 325 Tomahawk cruise missiles – still a record for average daily Tomahawk launches – which made the military-industrial complex smell an opportunity to expand Tomahawk orders and make a fortune. The nascent Fast Hawk was clearly seen as an obstacle.

With the arrival of 1999, Fast Hawk suffered repeated setbacks: first, a $7 million funding application for updating the test range equipment (existing equipment was indeed unsuitable for observing missiles with maximum Mach numbers above 4) was rejected on grounds of "serious overruns," even though Boeing and its partners believed that this funding was not part of the "advanced technology demonstration contract" and would benefit future U.S. Navy missile testing projects; soon after, the Pentagon ordered the termination of the Fast Hawk project on the grounds that there was no possibility of keeping the unit price below $200,000.

Plan layout for the Fast Hawk practicalization stage: the baseline model is expected to be used as a land-attack cruise missile, flying at high altitude throughout with terminal dive attacks; the anti-ship variant is expected to use a mixed trajectory, with a range at least half that of the land-attack version.

Thus, with the original first prototype scheduled to start flight tests and the 36-month contract still having a full year left, Fast Hawk became a historical term. Just one day before – on March 24, 1999 – the USS Philippine Sea cruiser fired the first Tomahawk at Yugoslavia, marking the beginning of NATO's 78-day barbaric bombing campaign. During this war, the U.S. and British coalition consumed 218 Tomahawks. Even if their ability to strike time-sensitive targets showed no improvement, the "Tomahawk Gang," created by the simplest economic principles, made any idea of replacing the Tomahawk seem absurdly ridiculous.

"Humans are forever repeating the same foolish mistakes." It's hard to say whether the U.S. Navy realized the true cause of Fast Hawk's demise when it launched the "High-Speed Strike Missile" (HiSSM) project in 2001. I can confirm that across the ocean at that time, when the YJ-12 and YJ-91 subsonic supersonic ramjet missile projects based on Russian technology were on track, people were also closely following the U.S. Navy's hypersonic scramjet cruise missile projects from HiSSM to Hyfly (often translated as "High Fly").

These pictures of "High Fly" appeared not only in military magazines but also in many academic journals.

In May 2002, as an important partner of Boeing in the "High Fly" project, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory successfully completed ignition tests of the dual-combustion ramjet (DCR) engine at a simulated Mach 6.5 and altitude of 27,400 meters in a wind tunnel. However, as these excellent scientists and engineers pushed "High Fly" to achieve one milestone after another, the "laundry detergent" waved by Powell at the United Nations General Assembly in February 2003 made this rare spirit of进取 in post-Cold War America appear quite laughable.

During the less than one-and-a-half-month "Operation Iraqi Freedom," another 802 Tomahawks were launched from the ships of the U.S. and British forces into the deserts of Iraq. In 2004, the Tomahawk Block IV capable of changing targets after launch achieved initial operational capability, making the "Tomahawk Gang" in the Pentagon feel even more justified: as long as the strike target can be changed, the slow speed of the Tomahawk isn't a problem; against opponents like Iraq, there will always be some targets too stupid to move. How could "High Fly," which flies so fast, react if the strike target needs to be changed after launch?

When peace-loving people lament how much each "Tomahawk" costs when America launches them in every war, it must be the time for the "Tomahawk Gang" to celebrate.

So, despite "High Fly" using the same JP-10 fuel as the Tomahawk and actually achieving hypersonic flight in August 2005 – with a successful launch test from an F-15E, verifying the booster could accelerate it to Mach 3; and in December the same year, with the help of the two-stage "Hound Dog-Orion" rocket boosters, the DCR engine successfully ignited and flew at 1615 meters per second for 15 seconds at 19,200 meters altitude – in the eyes of the "Tomahawk Gang," this was merely some "money-wasting gadget" being fiddled with by Boeing and the Navy.

When people later wrote epitaphs for "High Fly," they often cited the failures of two flight tests in September 2007 and January 2008 as major reasons. But if this epitaph were revised in March 11, 2024 – after the death of the U.S. Air Force's hypersonic missile AGM-183A (ARRW) – then it must explain why ARRW, which had a success rate of "as many as 2 out of 10" in its 10 test flights, managed to deceive from 2018 to 2024, yet "High Fly" was essentially dead after 2008?

Therefore, when the third planned flight test of "High Fly" was indefinitely canceled in 2009, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) "appointed" Lockheed Martin to take over the "Long Range Anti-Ship Missile" (LRASM), compared to Raytheon's jumping up and down to complain to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Boeing and its partner Pratt & Whitney didn't hesitate to turn around and create one world record after another in the X-51 project, including flying at Mach 5.1 for 210 seconds.

X-51 might be Boeing's last peak in human aerospace cutting-edge history.

Of course, by the time the LRASM demonstration phase contract was publicly released in January 2011, Raytheon's complaint was indeed quite valid: the contract stipulated that the subsonic LRASM-A only required two air-launched demonstrations, while the supersonic LRASM-B, in addition to air-launches, also included four combined ship-launch demonstrations using the MK41 vertical launch system. Following a certain logic, if the U.S. Navy buys one more LRASM-B, it would have to buy one less Tomahawk. It's hard to say whether behind DARPA's requirement in January 2012 to stop LRASM-B development due to "high risk," there was any shadow of the "Tomahawk Gang."

Although "High Fly" and LRASM-B are at odds with their "motherships," their conceptual images seem to be drawn by the same master.

However, by 2012, Lockheed Martin was already Lockheed Martin of the F-35 era.

In October 2012, the Pentagon granted Lockheed Martin a supplementary contract under the guise of "risk reduction research" to ensure LRASM-A could be launched from MK41. In Raytheon's view, it felt like the "Tomahawk Gang" couldn't be relied on when it mattered most, creating a sense of desolation.倒是同年12月，美国海军航空系统司令部对此提出异议，认为这一能力完全可以由“战术战斧”实现，由此开启了2014年美国海军“进攻性对面作战”（Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare, OASuW）竞标这个新坑。

To accommodate the "Harpoon" rail launcher, the MK-114 booster used by the ship-launched LRASM looks somewhat makeshift but also reveals Lockheed's ambitions.

OASuW's so-called "Increment 1" is essentially a battle between the "New Era Anti-Ship Tomahawk" and the ship-launched LRASM. At this point, for the Pentagon, which had been manipulating things since the Gulf War 30 years ago, the "Tomahawk Gang" had become unwieldy and needed a "new faction" of sufficient weight to counterbalance it. The LRASM/AGM-158C, derived from the U.S. Air Force's next-generation air-to-ground missile JASSM/AGM-158, was perfectly timed and could not be sacrificed to maintain the "Tomahawk Gang" at the expense of "158 Family" morale.

Just as in the movie "Chasing Dragon," where the Hong Kong authorities kept throwing new sweeteners to attract the fighting among local triads, the Pentagon simultaneously threw out the OASuW "Increment 2." This bid clearly targeting "great power competition threats" after 2024 requires Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to provide an air-breathing hypersonic missile usable by F-35C and F/A-18E/F. At least the new name "High Speed Air-Launched Offensive (HALO)" is much easier to read than the convoluted OASuW.

However, the question arose: on one hand, HALO was positioned as the U.S. Navy's "proud missile," vowing to form initial operational capability by the 2028 fiscal year, forming a "one slide one suction" high hypersonic combination with the "Conventional Prompt Strike" missiles deployed on the "Zumwalt"-class destroyers and "Virginia"-class nuclear submarines to counter our forces; on the other hand, with several generations of technological accumulation in this field, Boeing, which had been excluded from the competition from the beginning, had a seemingly very valid reason - the Boeing embroiled in various scandals from aircraft to civilian planes in 2023 was still the "spring breeze galloping" Boeing of 1997?

In fact, after hearing about the HALO bidding, Boeing also presented two different designs: "Advanced Supersonic Ramjet Propulsion (SPEAR)" and "Hyfly-2"; however, perhaps because Boeing didn't bring fruit baskets, the U.S. Navy did not mention Boeing's involvement in any official documents regarding the HALO bidding.

Returning to the HALO project itself, from the emergence of OASuW's "Increment 2" in 2014 to naming it HALO and granting Lockheed Martin and Raytheon preliminary development contracts in March 2023, nine years without doing anything doesn't look like the behavior of a "proud missile." If HALO's real positioning was actually just a "carrot project" to appease Raytheon's "let's start anew," then Ted Ford, director of the Unmanned Combat Aircraft and Strike Weapons Program Office of the U.S. Navy, evaluating HALO as a hypersonic missile that "didn't live up to its hype" (with a Mach number of only 4) and its current fate are quite reasonable.

For Lockheed Martin, which had already learned in DARPA's HTV-2 project that "hypersonic" isn't something you can just claim, the collapse of HALO was insignificant, amounting to nothing more than wasting a few rendering graphics. After all, while HALO collapsed, the U.S. Navy clearly reaffirmed its intention to continue improving and developing LRASM, and as long as the "158 family" prospers, how does it matter whether the U.S. Navy has a little more or less "high-end anti-ship firepower"?

As long as it benefits marketing, "destroying one country with one missile" is just a minor matter.

For Raytheon, even without the AGM-181 nuclear warhead cruise missile won in 2020, with the Air Force's "hypersonic sole child" HACM as a fallback, the anti-ship variant of the Tomahawk returned to the Navy's nuclear submarines last year. With recent U.S. strikes on the Houthis, the total number of Tomahawks used in combat is nearing 3000 (over 550 test firings and nearly 2450 combat launches), earning money and venting frustrations. What is HALO? Is it tasty?

So, when the military-industrial complex has reached the point of "I don't care what you think, I care about what I think," the research and production pattern most beneficial to its own profits naturally forms rather than what is most beneficial to enhancing the combat effectiveness of the military. When the Pentagon's wars ultimately produced the "Tomahawk Gang" and the "158 Family" as two mutually constraining factions, it seemed that everyone believed that "as long as the Pentagon lets the two families collaborate, we're just chickens and tiles." In the face of the thus formed and entrenched "subsonic stealth anti-ship missile cult," from "Fast Hawk" to "High Fly" to LRASM-B to HALO, the U.S. Navy's ramjet-powered anti-ship missiles are destined to fail to achieve enlightenment for many lifetimes.

One major reason for the "I want everything" across the ocean is precisely because it sees America constantly trying new configurations through methods like "PPT superpower," thereby continuing the mission inertia of "aiming at strong enemies and adding fuel."

Like I joked before, "the U.S. Army wakes up to find it still has the same stuff from 40 years ago." In 1985, the U.S. Air Force and Naval Aviation had only two supersonic air-to-surface strike weapons: "Standard" (AGM-78) and "HARM" (AGM-88B). By 2025, it was still "Standard" (AIM-174B, this "air-launched Standard 6" may also have some sea-attack capabilities) and "HARM" (AGM-88E/G). However, from the perspective of "existence is rational," the ability of "Standard" and "HARM" to hold their ground in the "subsonic cult" of the U.S. military aviation suggests a certain mindset of the U.S. military.

In 2024, the U.S. Air Force began equipping Northrop Grumman's "Stand-In Attack Weapon" (SiAW), which is based on the AGM-88G and features increased warhead weight to attack more targets; in April, Lockheed Martin's "Mako" (SiAW) missile model for the SiAW project was unveiled at the "Sea Air Space Expo" hosted by the U.S. Naval League. These quasi-hypersonic missiles, which are essentially small air-launched ballistic missiles, have the potential to change the current state of U.S. military equipment because they can fit into the bomb bays of F-35A/C.

For the U.S. hypersonic community, the entry of SiAW and "Mako" is clearly an admission of defeat; but for the U.S. military aviation, it might be the beginning of pragmatism and putting aside arrogance.

In summary, after HALO was canceled, only the Army's "Dark Eagle" (LRHW), the Navy's CPS ballistic missile, and the Air Force's HACM supersonic ramjet cruise missile remain as surviving hypersonic projects. The "Trump 1.0" era plan to catch up with and surpass our similar projects through rapid development of eight hypersonic programs has failed. Even if SiAW and "Mako" are equipped, for the U.S., it means acknowledging a position of following rather than leading in this field – it seems impossible to "win" anymore. But for the military-industrial complex, losing is at most the loss of the U.S. military; they are still "winning."

Looking back now at the U.S. Air Force's sixth-generation aircraft project – Boeing F-47, considered a "licking dog project" – who knows if Boeing didn't see through the vicissitudes of life in these decades and decided, "when the thought of licking Trump arises, suddenly the world opens wide." Leveraging investments and accumulations from the Cold War era, with wisdom and courage never seen in post-Cold War America, Boeing developed "High Fly" and X-51 that once awed competitors, only to end up making嫁衣 for the Raytheon-Northrop Grumman consortium's HACM (now "proud missile" title should transfer to it).

Qin people do not have time to mourn themselves, and later generations mourn them; later generations mourn them but do not learn from them, and thus future generations mourn future generations as well.

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Original source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7492606342482575884/

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