First US hypersonic NASM missile will not enter service until 2027

Pentagon leaders are making feverish efforts to close the gap with Russia and China on hypersonic weapons. Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, the military contractors that won the nearly $1 billion contract, intend to arm the U.S. Air Force with the “world’s first hypersonic cruise missile” NASM, capable of speeds up to 20 Mach, by 2027.

The NASM is a tactical weapon, an air-launched cruise missile for destroying ground targets. The Pentagon command plans to use it at the outset of a large-scale non-nuclear conflict.

It will be the world’s first aircraft with a hypersonic ramjet propulsion system (HJRP). Unlike the turbojet engine (TRE), which uses oxygen at subsonic speeds, the HFRD absorbs oxygen at supersonic speeds. The more oxygen-rich fuel helps the engine accelerate the rocket to extremely high speeds.

For the time being, only the nuclear warheads of ballistic missiles in the passive sector of flight, which have a speed of over 24,000 km/h, can do this in the US military. In contrast, hypersonic missiles are non-nuclear and can have no warheads at all, striking targets solely through the enormous kinetic energy they owe to their hypersonic speed.

Almost nothing is known about the characteristics of the NASM, except that it is small and will be carried by the latest generation of fighters. It is also not known if it will be ready by 2027, as all recent tests of hypersonic missile prototypes in the United States have failed.