Hypersonic Missile Coming Five Years Faster Thanks to Acquisition Reform

[rangerrebew]

Hypersonic Missile Coming Five Years Faster Thanks to Acquisition Reform
Dec. 3, 2020 | By John A. Tirpak

A rewrite of the Pentagon’s acquisition rulebook is allowing the Air Force’s AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) to progress five years faster than it would have under previous procedures, the service’s top uniformed acquisition officer said Dec. 3. The missile will achieve operational capability before the end of 2022, he said.

“If we had planned this as a traditional program, it would have taken an additional five years,” Lt. Gen. Duke Z. Richardson, military deputy to Air Force service acquisition executive Will Roper, said in a National Defense Industrial Association online program on acquisition reform. The ARRW “started in May of ’18,” and, although it has experienced “some hiccups,” it will achieve an early operational capability “by the fourth quarter of ’22,” he said, with “a residual capability once that’s done.”

The ARRW is the Air Force’s “hallmark rapid prototyping program,” he said.

https://www.airforcemag.com/hypersonic-missile-coming-five-years-faster-thanks-to-acquisition-reform/