The US Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin a $694 million contract to produce and field the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), the Department of the Air Force announced on October 26, 2026. The contract had been awarded on September 29, 2026, under the Department of War's Enterprise-Wide Agile Acquisition Contract. Citing operational security, the department did not disclose how many weapons were ordered or when deliveries would begin. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink described ARRW as a turning point and as a high-speed weapon able to penetrate advanced air defenses.
Lockheed Martin confirmed the contract on October 27, 2026, as it broke ground on an expansion of Building P-20 in Troy, Alabama, adding about 4,370 square meters (47,000 square feet) and tripling the existing production area there, with jobs expected over the next four years. The company said it had already funded preparation work, including $67 million for the expansion and equipment, within a broader investment of $8 billion to $9 billion planned through 2030 to meet munitions demand. Its hypersonic assembly facility in Courtland, Alabama, opened in October 2021, supports ARRW alongside the US Navy's Conventional Prompt Strike and the US Army's Long Range Hypersonic Weapon programs.
ARRW is a boost-glide weapon designed to strike high-value targets from standoff range: a solid-fuel booster accelerates it beyond Mach 5 before releasing a maneuvering glide vehicle, and it is integrated on the B-52 Stratofortress. The program's path to production was troubled: after three unsuccessful tests in 2021, it achieved its first successful booster test on May 14, 2022, and the first launch of a full operational prototype from a B-52H on December 9, 2022. The Air Force abandoned procurement plans in 2023 in favor of the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), and the fiscal 2025 budget request released in March 2024 included no ARRW procurement funding. On June 5, 2025, however, then-Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin told the House Armed Services Committee that the fiscal 2026 request would include ARRW funding. The Air Force is now pursuing two distinct air-launched hypersonic weapons: the rocket-boosted ARRW and the scramjet-powered HACM.