The U.S. military has awarded defense giant Lockheed Martin a contract worth nearly $700 million to pump out a previously-shelved hypersonic weapon that can be launched from U.S. Air Force aircraft.
The contract is part of the so-called Arsenal of Freedom unveiled by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, referring to a Pentagon push toward churning out more U.S. weapons.
The decision to put the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) into production is a "turning point" for advanced American weapons, said Air Force Secretary Troy Meink.
Western countries have trailed behind Russia and China in developing hypersonic weapons, which are expensive and difficult-to-produce systems able to travel upwards of five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5.
One of the features of a hypersonic weapon, though, is the ability to twist and turn so it is very difficult to intercept before it slams into its target.
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The U.S. doesn't currently have any operational hypersonic weapons, but it has several programs developing both hypersonic cruise missiles and hypersonic boost-glide systems. A hypersonic glide vehicle is a warhead or missile launched into space by a rocket and then gliding through the upper atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.
In the early 2000s, the U.S. was ahead of the rest of the field in the race to sketch out hypersonic designs, but ultimately de-prioritized these efforts, said William Freer, a research fellow in national security at the U.K.-based Council on Geostrategy think tank.
As U.S. interest waned, Washington's competitors stormed ahead, seeing hypersonics as a way to neutralize advances in American defenses, he told Newsweek.
The Pentagon says hypersonic weapons have "fundamentally altered the landscape of military technology and strategy," and pointed to the costs of developing this new class of weapons when unveiling its request for a record defense budget for the 2027 fiscal year.
The Trump administration has argued the U. S.—already the world's largest military spender—needs to increase its annual military spending to $1.5 trillion to rebuild weapons stocks and keep up with the U.S.'s adversaries. Around $38 billion of this would be dedicated to hypersonic programs, according to congressional research.
The U.S. Army and Navy are jointly developing a missile referred to both as the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) and the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW). The Army, which officially labeled the latter as Dark Eagle last year, had planned to be able to deploy the missile by 2023.
The Navy, meanwhile, plans to launch the CPS from its Zumwalt-class destroyers—a type of guided-missile warship—as well as from Virginia-class submarines. The missile, beset with delays, may be also fired from the future Trump-class battleships, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Congressional watchdog.
The Navy axed its second planned hypersonic weapon, the Hypersonic Air-Launched Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare (HALO) missile, in 2024 because of cost.
Hypersonic missiles will likely cost nearly $70 million per missile, according to the GAO. This far exceeds the roughly $4 million price tag attached to each Patriot air defense interceptor or Tomahawk cruise missile.
The Air Force had moved to cancel the development of the ARRW in 2023 after a run of testing failures, choosing instead to concentrate on its other hypersonic program, dubbed the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile. This weapon was flight tested earlier this month in Australia.
"ARRW has been going through a stop-start process in recent years for a mix of reasons as budgets and priorities have been balanced," Freer said. "Resurrecting the program suggests data from its final tests was positive and that budgets and or priorities have shifted to allow the weapon to move towards production."
The Pentagon says the U.S. also needs to develop ways of detecting, tracking and intercepting incoming hypersonic missiles, like those launched by Russia or China.
These defenses include radar networks, sensors in space, and air defense interceptors suitable for hypersonic missiles, which will be part of President Donald Trump's ambitious and pricey future Golden Dome missile shield.
It will, according to the administration, protect the U.S. against "next-generation" threats—like hypersonic missiles.
Russia's Arsenal
Russia has claimed it has several different types of hypersonic weapons, including missiles launched at targets in Ukraine throughout Moscow's full-scale invasion of its neighbor from February 2022.
The Kremlin's Avangard program uses a hypersonic glide vehicle launched from an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). It's one of the six "next generation" weapons Russian President Vladimir Putin lauded in a 2018 speech, and is thought to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads over distances of more than roughly 6,000 kilometers.
A separate program, known as Zircon or Tsirkon, has developed a ship-launched missile Russia says can travel between March 6 and Mach 8. Putin has claimed this missile has a range upward of 1,000 kilometers.
Ukrainian sources reported in February 2024 Russia had used a Tsirkon missile against Ukraine. Officials have since repeatedly said the hypersonic weapon has been used in missile barrages against the country.
Russia also has ballistic missiles it claims can travel at hypersonic speeds, but this doesn't necessarily mean they can maneuver midflight to effectively dodge air defenses.
The Kinzhal—or "Dagger"—missile is often described as an air-launched ballistic weapon able to move around during its flight, as hypersonics can. Also a "next generation" weapon, Moscow claims it is a nuclear-capable missile covering more than 2,000 kilometers at Mach 10.
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Russia has said the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), which Moscow launched at the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro in November 2024, can travel at hypersonic speeds. But Western experts say there's no compelling evidence that the missile can carry hypersonic boost-glide vehicle, such as the Avangard.
China's Designs
China's hypersonic journey, like Russia's, "reflects a concern that U.S. hypersonic weapons could enable the United States to conduct a preemptive, decapitating strike" on its nuclear forces, according to congressional analysis. Russia, China and the U.S. are the world's three largest nuclear powers, by warhead stockpile size.
Unlike Russian and Chinese systems, U.S. hypersonic weapons aren't designed to carry nuclear warheads, which analysts say means they need to be more accurate because the warhead will be less destructive.
Just days after Russia tested a hypersonic glide vehicle, Beijing tested its own version, a 2025 briefing for lawmakers read. Separately, the Pentagon told Congress last year Beijing has the "world’s leading hypersonic missile arsenal."
Experts say China has developed a medium-range missile system with a hypersonic glide vehicle, known as DF-17. U.S. officials judge the missile to have a roughly 2,000 kilometer range.
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Beijing's defense ministry released footage earlier this year purporting to show the DF-17 missile being test-launched in the Gobi Desert.
Chinese state media has also listed the YJ-21 and DF-26 missiles as hypersonic weapons. The DF-26, according to the U.S. Center for International and Strategic Studies, is the first Chinese non-nuclear ballistic missile that could strike U.S. forces in Guam, with a range of 4,000 kilometers.
The Pentagon has also assessed China's DF-27, with a range of up to 8,000 kilometers, could have an option to carry a hypersonic glide vehicle.
Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Robert Greenall and Tobias Meyjes