Super Hornets Sortie with Blackbeard Missiles in Latest Test
The U.S. Navy’s first carrier aviation-based hypersonic missile is one step closer to achieving early operational capability following a recent flight test. An F/A-18E/F Super Hornet took off with a pair of the Castelion-made Mach 5+ missiles from Naval Air Station Patuxent, Maryland, the Navy announced Sept. 30. The test, which took place on Sept. 18, was meant to validate the missile’s capability to be carried aboard the fighter. Blackbeard, also known as the Multi-mission Affordable Capacity Effector, was procured by the sea service to rapidly integrate an extended-range hypersonic strike capability on its fighters. The acquisition comes amid the
A pair of Blackbeard hypersonic missiles mounted on a Super Hornet during a developmental test flight on Sept. 18, 2026. PAE(A) photo The U.S. Navy’s first carrier aviation-based hypersonic missile is one step closer to achieving early operational capability following a recent flight test.
An F/A-18E/F Super Hornet took off with a pair of the Castelion-made Mach 5+ missiles from Naval Air Station Patuxent, Maryland, the Navy announced Sept. 30. The test, which took place on Sept. 18, was meant to validate the missile’s capability to be carried aboard the fighter.
Blackbeard, also known as the Multi-mission Affordable Capacity Effector, was procured by the sea service to rapidly integrate an extended-range hypersonic strike capability on its fighters. The acquisition comes amid the Navy’s broader efforts to modernize the armaments of its carrier air wings to counter increasingly advanced anti-aircraft warfare capabilities from adversaries such as China.
“Blackbeard will provide carrier-based strike fighters with a responsive, high-speed strike option to pierce contested anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) envelopes while significantly expanding theater magazine depth,” reads the Portfolio Acquisition Executive Aviation news release on the developmental test.
The service is aiming for the Blackbeard hypersonics to reach Early Operational Capability this year. The missile will be debuted in carrier-based fighter squadrons in U.S. Indo-Pacific and Central commands, according to a Naval Air Systems Command post on X.
Last month also saw the Navy contract Castelion for 444 missiles in a $200 million deal. This procurement follows the initial 50 missiles procured for Blackbeard’s the Early Operational Capability in June.
“By scaling agile, high-volume production models, the program aligns with the [Department of the Navy’s] Hedge Strategy to develop cost-effective, rapidly fieldable kinetic mass. Blackbeard will continue developmental flight testing at NAS Patuxent River as it progresses toward future live-fire milestones,” reads the PAE Aviation release.
With recent conflicts in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, militaries across the world have eyed a high-low mix of munitions to deal with a variety of challenges involving proliferated advanced air defenses and massed forces. Pentagon leadership have said the services are working to field forces capable of conducting cost-effective strikes with tens of thousands of low-cost containerized and air-launched cruise missiles. These missiles will be fielded to enable more exquisite systems, such as the BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile and AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile, to strike heavily defended targets through massed fires.
Blackbeard was pursued as a solution to a “key operational problem” presented by the Pentagon to Industry, according to the PAE Aviation release. Last fall, the Defense Department announced it was prioritizing munitions and systems that “meet our needs faster, even when they do not meet every requirement” in its acquisition transformation strategy. From the onset, Castelion’s Hypersonic aimed was envisioned as a highly maneuverable, low-cost and affordable mass missile.
Blackbeard joins a variety of recently revealed Navy air-launched missiles that represent a marked range increase over the Super Hornet’s Cold War-era loadouts. These include the AIM-174B Gunslinger, AIM-242 Malice and AIM-260 air-to-air missiles. For surface strike, the Navy will field Blackbeard alongside the C-3 upgrade of the LRASM stealthy anti-ship missile.
