The AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon was supposed to be America’s first operational air-launched hypersonic missile. It was killed in March 2023 after three consecutive failed flight tests, a programme cost overrun, and a Pentagon decision that “the technology was not yet ready.” The two prototypes left over went into long-term storage at Edwards Air Force Base.

This week the US Air Force confirmed those prototypes are being pulled back out, dusted off, and rebuilt for a new round of flight tests. The ARRW is alive again, and the reason is one thing only: the Iran air campaign of November 2025 showed the Pentagon what it cost to fight a peer-level air war without a single hypersonic weapon in the inventory.

The Three Failures That Killed It

ARRW began as a Lockheed Martin programme in 2018 with a simple promise: a fighter or bomber would launch a missile that climbed to roughly 100,000 feet, separated, dropped a hypersonic glide body, and steered it down to a target 1,600 kilometres away at speeds nothing on Earth could intercept.

The boost worked. The glide didn’t. In April 2021 the booster failed to ignite. In December 2022 the test article tumbled. In March 2023 the third flight ended in failure for reasons the Air Force would not disclose. Congress was unimpressed. ARRW was zeroed in the FY24 budget.

Iran Changed Everything

The November 2025 strikes on Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure exposed two uncomfortable truths. First, even Iran’s degraded but still functional integrated air-defence network forced US strike packages to fly long, fuel-burning approaches and accept a small but real loss rate. Second, the Air Force fired roughly half its forward-deployed JASSM-ER stockpile in three weeks, and could not have sustained the campaign through a fourth.

A working hypersonic missile would have changed both equations. ARRW shoots from outside the threat envelope, ignores SAM coverage entirely on the way in, and arrives faster than any human or computer can react. One missile per kill, no escort fighter losses, no follow-up strikes required.

“We made a mistake when we cancelled it,” one senior Air Force official told reporters this week. “The technology was 80% there. The threat environment we now operate in is 100% there. We’re going to finish the job.”

The Hypersonic Gap

Russia has Kinzhal, Avangard, and Tsirkon. China has DF-17 and the rumoured DF-27. The United States has — until ARRW is fielded — exactly zero operational hypersonic strike weapons. The Army’s Dark Eagle has been delayed. The Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike is in test. The Air Force’s HACM (a smaller air-breathing follow-on to ARRW) is two years from IOC at the earliest.

A revived ARRW, with the lessons of three failed tests baked in, could be operational by 2028. That timeline assumes the funding survives the next budget cycle, the technology actually works the second time around, and the Air Force does not change its mind again.

Sources: The Aviationist, Air & Space Forces Magazine, Pentagon FY26 supplemental request.