The Air Force Research Lab just announced it will pay to integrate the new Blackbeard air-launched hypersonic missile onto America’s F-16s.
This means the Blackbeard is quickly becoming the high-speed missile of choice for everything from carrier fighters to Air Force jets and even the Army’s ground-based HIMARS rocket artillery systems.
Details about Blackbeard are still scarce, but what we know is incredibly promising.
The weapon, which is being built by California-based Castellan, is said to have a range of roughly 500 miles, or 800 kilometers. It can travel at speeds over Mach 5 and, most importantly, when it comes to hypersonic weapons, maneuver at those sustained speeds to dramatically complicate enemy efforts to intercept it.
The Blackbeard is said to carry a guidance suite that allows for strikes against stationary or moving targets, including ships at sea, and has already seen a great deal of rapid testing.
To give you a sense of what that speed means in the fight, if you launched a Tomahawk cruise missile at a target 500 miles away, it would get there in about 53 minutes. If you were to launch a Blackbeard at that same target, it would cover the same distance in just under eight.
The Navy was the first to jump on the Blackbeard bandwagon during early testing of the weapon. In February 2026, it first awarded Castelion nearly $50 million to continue maturing the system. Then, in June, it placed a $23.4 million order for the first 50 weapons and associated shipping and storage containers.
Si, even in this early production phase, the Navy is only paying about $468,000 a weapon for these hypersonic missiles; this amount hints at what the Air Force could end up paying per missile.
In fact, the Navy thinks this weapon is so promising that it has already ponied up another $105 million to integrate Blackbeard hypersonic missiles into their F/A-18 Super Hornets, with initial operating capability already set for next year.
This will make the Super Hornet the first fighter in history to carry an operational hypersonic missile – a claim that Russia attempted to seize by pretending its Kinzhal ballistic missile was something it’s not.
Related: Navy’s historic, new hypersonic missile is one step closer to service
The Navy has also disclosed that Blackbeard falls within its stated requirements for the weapon: it is 12 feet long or shorter, and weighs less than 2,750 pounds. For context, that would make the weapon roughly the same length and diameter as an AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile, but potentially much heavier.
The missile itself appears to include a rocket booster meant to carry it up to a sufficient altitude and speed for its hypersonic glide vehicle, or HGV, to separate from it and close with its target, Using control surfaces visible on the weapon to change course more dramatically than could be possible with ballistic warheads.
Based on the shape of Blackbeard, however, it’s possible that the HGV may not be a strictly glide vehicle, and may actually possess its own propellant, potentially allowing for higher speeds and more dramatic maneuverability.
Integrating a new weapon into a fighter like the F-16 can take some time, money, and testing, and the Air Force Research Lab footing the bill for this effort is no guarantee that the missile will make the leap to operational service for the branch.
But with orders already placed by the Navy, and the Army now also considering the purchase of Blackbeards, the Air Force may not want to miss out on the hypersonic fun as it continues to mature its other air-launched hypersonic missiles, the AGM-183 ARRW and the AHM-4 Hypersonic Attack Cruise missile.
Feature Image: U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons conduct a combat air patrol over the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, May 25, 2025. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Natalie Jones)
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