The US Army is testing the $41 million LHRW hypersonic missile, which has not yet been tested in flight
The US military is beginning to practice the use of a promising complex that has not yet been tested
From June 25 to 27, 2024, the US Army conducted an exercise codenamed Resolute Hunter 24-2, which involved the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force (MTDF), which is armed with the Dark Eagle hypersonic missile system battery, also known as LHRW.
These exercises are important for the U.S. military because they were the first to practice the use of hypersonic missile weapons in modern combat conditions. But the nuance is that the United States was practicing the use of a system that has never been successfully test-fired.
In their release, the Americans detailed that Resolute Hunter 24-2 was part of a larger exercise that lasted 3 weeks and involved three unnamed participating countries and “four joint services.”
There are no reports that actual launches of Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles were conducted as part of Resolute Hunter 24-2. There is only an indication that during these exercises, the US military practiced the “detection – target destruction” chain in real time, with LHRW acting as the “core” of this chain.
At the same time, apparently, both the US military itself and representatives of unnamed other countries participating in the exercise transmitted targeting information to Dark Eagle. The general conclusion of the exercise was that “the ability to adapt to difficult conditions under various scenarios was demonstrated.”
The last known attempt by the U.S. Army to conduct a test launch with the LHRW was dated November 2023, and it failed.
The Americans themselves considered that the problem there was still in the missile, which literally costs $41 million per unit, and the launcher of the complex worked perfectly, which is why they apparently decided that Dark Eagle could be brought out for training and even give new orders for this system.
