The U.S. Navy is moving ever closer to being the first military service on the planet to boast operational, air-launched hypersonic missiles, and it has just released new footage to prove it.
Just a few days ago now, the U.S. Navy’s Office of the Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Aviation released a video showing the Navy’s new Blackbeard hypersonic missile being carried by F/A-18 Super Hornets in flight testing.
Built by Castelion, the Blackbeard is now expected to reach operational service as early as 2028.
Hypersonic is a term generally used to describe vehicles that travel faster than Mach 5. But for a weapon to be classified as “hypersonic,” it needs to sustain hypersonic speeds while also demonstrating a more extreme degree of maneuverability than is possible with ballistic warheads.
It’s that maneuverability, more than the speed itself, that makes these weapons so difficult to defend against; that’s why a hypersonic cruise missile traveling at Mach 6 is generally considered a more potent threat than a ballistic missile traveling at Mach 20.
Castelion’s Blackbeard hypersonic missile appears to be something of a hypersonic glide vehicle. It is initially powered by a solid-fuel rocket motor to a high altitude, before separating from the motor and gliding, unpowered but at extreme speeds, back down toward its target while making maneuvers along the way.
The Navy recently awarded Castelion contracts for both Blackbeard production and integration into the Super Hornet. The per unit price of these missiles will be less than $400,000 which is very inexpensive. In contrast, the Conventional Prompt Strike Weapon, or the Navy’s ship-launched hypersonic glide vehicle, is currently at between $51 and $56 million per weapon.
Few details about Blackbeard’s capabilities have been released, but we do know that the weapon is likely to have a range of around 500 mile, or 800 kilometers and travel at speeds above Mach 5.
It is reportedly rated for both stationary and moving targets on land or at sea. This will make the Navy’s Super Hornets not only the world’s only fighters to sport hypersonic missiles, but also, the only fighters to boast hypersonic anti-ship capabilities.
Based on footage of the missile, it is possible that Blackbeard may also represent a new form of hypersonic weapon that actually includes solid-fuel rocket propulsion in the glide vehicle itself.
The Navy isn’t the only branch of service who’s planning to get Blackbeard into the fight. The Army is also ordering its own ground-launched variant of the weapon.
This is not the only air-launched hypersonic weapon the U.S. has in testing. The Air Force’s AGM-183A ARRW, or Air-launched rapid response weapon, is a similar but much larger air-launched hypersonic glide vehicle that’s expected to offer at least twice the range, out beyond 1,000 miles. There is also the much smaller scramjet-powered Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile that is expected to travel even further, but along a lower-altitude trajectory.
Feature Image: Castelion’s Blackbeard hypersonic missile. (Castelion)
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