In September 2022, the U.S. Air Force awarded a $985 million contract to Raytheon Missiles & Defense and Northrop Grumman to develop the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile. That missile, also known as HACM, was initially developed in the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment, or SCIFiRE, a cooperative program with Australia to design and test hypersonic capabilities.
Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman have been partnering since 2013 and signed a teaming agreement in 2019 to develop, produce and integrate Northrop Grumman’s scramjet engines onto Raytheon Technologies’ air-breathing hypersonic weapons. That collaboration resulted in the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, which was tested successfully in 2021 and 2022.
