U.S. Army contractor Firehawk successfully tests Hydra-70 rockets

Firehawk successfully fired six Hydra-70 rockets in a live-fire test at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, the company said Friday, achieving a 100 percent success rate.

The rockets were built at Firehawk’s facility in Crawford, Mississippi, and fired from an M261 rocket launcher, the launcher used operationally with the Hydra-70 system on aircraft including the AH-64 Apache, UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-1Z Viper. The test followed the U.S. Army’s recent award of an Other Transaction Authority agreement to Firehawk as part of an effort to diversify the Hydra-70 supply chain.

The test was structured to collect ballistic flight-test data that programs typically require during First Article Inspection and Lot Acceptance Testing. Firehawk said gathering that data ahead of required program milestones reduces technical and schedule risk tied to the Army agreement and any follow-on production contracts.

“Going six-for-six is an important validation of both the product and the manufacturing approach behind it,” said Will Edwards, co-founder and CEO of Firehawk. “More importantly, we’re not waiting for contractual milestones to begin retiring risk. We are investing ahead of the program, generating the data the Army will need and demonstrating that Firehawk is ready to move quickly toward production.”

The Army’s Aviation Rocket and Small Guided Munitions Product Office used the One Nation Innovation marketplace to award agreements to Firehawk and three other defense contractors, establishing additional sources for Hydra-70 production. Under those agreements, each vendor will deliver 24 prototype Hydra-70 rockets along with a modernized Technical Data Package within 18 months.

The Army said the acquisition strategy is intended to establish multiple viable production sources, drive competitive pricing on annual orders, improve manufacturability and add industrial base surge capacity for emergent mission requirements.

“America and its allies need additional production capacity. And they need modern manufacturing approaches that can bring that capacity online faster,” Edwards said. “This test demonstrates that we can build, test and iterate quickly while meeting the performance requirements of a fielded system. That is how we start building America’s arsenal faster.”

Firehawk designs its products at its headquarters in Dallas and is building a 340-acre (138-hectare) production facility in Lawton, Oklahoma. The company holds a DCMA-rated integration facility in Crawford, Mississippi, and conducts static fire and flight tests at two sites in West Texas, including a 30-square-mile (78-square-kilometer) launch range.