The US Navy has officially cancelled the HALO (Hypersonic Air Launched Offensive) hypersonic missile development program, which was supposed to be a new weapon for destroying surface and land targets. This was announced by Rear Admiral Stephen Tedford, head of the U.S. Navy Unmanned Aircraft and Strike Weapons Program Executive Office, on April 11, 2025. The reason for the cancellation was financial constraints: after a thorough analysis of the program's costs and effectiveness, the Navy decided to abandon the project in order to optimize the budget and focus on priority areas. This decision reduces the potential strike capabilities of the US Navy, which counted on HALO to enhance the combat effectiveness of carrier-based aviation.

The HALO program began in the spring of 2023, when Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) awarded a $116 million contract to Raytheon Missiles & Defense and Lockheed Martin. The air-to-surface missile was intended to be deployed on F/A-18E/F aircraft and would be able to engage targets at long ranges while minimizing the threat from enemy air defenses. However, performance issues arose early on, with the Navy recognizing that HALO would not achieve hypersonic speeds (above Mach 5) but would only accelerate to Mach 4+, which does not meet the strict definition of a hypersonic weapon. The missile was originally planned to be fielded no later than FY2029 and achieve full operational capability by 2031, but those plans have now been scrapped.

According to Tedford, the tasks that HALO was supposed to perform have been transferred to the AGM-158C LRASM anti-ship missile developed by Lockheed Martin. This system is already used on the F/A-18 and B-1B bombers of the U.S. Air Force, providing long-range and accurate strikes. However, abandoning HALO could slow the development of advanced technologies in the Navy’s arsenal, especially against the backdrop of competition from Russia and China, which are actively developing hypersonic weapons. For the U.S. Navy, the decision was a compromise between financial realities and strategic ambitions.

According to Naval News, the decision to cancel HALO was made after an analysis showed that the program's costs were exceeding its expected returns. A Pentagon source said the cost of each missile could have been around $10 million, which would have been a significant burden on the Navy's budget, especially as other military projects were rising in price.

Defense News adds that HALO was originally conceived as part of the Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare Increment 2 (OASuW Inc 2) program, aimed at countering growing threats from China in the Indo-Pacific region. According to experts, the abandonment of the project could weaken the US position in this strategic area, where hypersonic technologies are becoming a key factor. Brian Clark, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), noted that LRASM, although effective, is inferior in speed and maneuverability to hypersonic systems being developed by competitors.