The Air Force's ‘Super Duper Missile’ Has Faded to Black
The once-promising hypersonic weapon made its final launch, as the Air Force contemplates the next leap in defense. On March 17, almost seven decades after the venerable B-52 bomber entered service with the U.S. Air Force, one of the eight-engine jets took off from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam carrying a unique weapon that was a far cry from the nuclear gravity bombs famously flown to their Soviet target by Major Kong in the film Dr. Strangelove. Slung under this B-52’s wing was a beefy AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Respond Weapon (ARRW or ‘Arrow’)—a hypersonic missile once dubbed the “Super Duper missile” by Donald Trump, designed to race towards targets over a thousand miles away at eight times the speed of sound while retaining enough maneuverability to evade air defenses. BUY This was also the first test of a U.S. hypersonic weapon in the Western Pacific. It was pointedly staged from Guam, a key U.S. military base in event of a conflict with China. But there was another unusual as