The Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) is a

scramjet A scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) is a variant of a ramjet airbreathing jet engine in which combustion takes place in supersonic airflow. As in ramjets, a scramjet relies on high vehicle speed to compress the incoming air forcefully ...

-powered

hypersonic In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that exceeds 5 times the speed of sound, often stated as starting at speeds of Mach 5 and above. The precise Mach number at which a craft can be said to be flying at hypersonic speed varies, since in ...

air-launched cruise missile An air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) is a cruise missile that is launched from a military aircraft. Current versions are typically standoff weapons which are used to attack predetermined land targets with conventional, nuclear or thermonuclear p ...

project, the successor of the

Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept The Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC, pronounced "hawk") is a scramjet powered air-launched hypersonic cruise missile project at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), that had a successful hypersonic flight an ...

(HAWC) and the SCIFiRE hypersonic programs. Technology developed for the HAWC demonstrator was used to influence the design of the HACM, a

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...

Program of Record The processes of government procurement in the United States enable federal, state and local government bodies in the country to acquire goods, services (including construction), and interests in real property. In fiscal year 2019, the US Federal ...

to create a scramjet-powered hypersonic missile it could deploy as an operational weapon. The contract to develop HACM further was awarded to

Raytheon Raytheon Technologies Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense conglomerate headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. It is one of the largest aerospace and defense manufacturers in the world by revenue and market capitaliza ...

in September 2022. HACM will use a

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational aerospace and defense technology company. With 90,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $30 billion, it is one of the world's largest weapons manufacturers and military techn ...

scramjet. The system will give the US military" tactical flexibility to employ fighters to hold high-value, time-sensitive targets at risk, while maintaining bombers for other strategic targets"https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2022-11/news/first-us-hypersonic-deployment-track-2023

References

Cruise missiles Proposed weapons of the United States {{rocket-stub