Jason L. Sherman, Daily Beast: The Hypersonic Arms Race Heats Up
The U.S. military executes what it says was a 'successful' Mach 5 weapon test over the Pacific. Have Russia and China had even greater success?
At about 3 a.m. Halloween morning, senior Pentagon officials gathered around television monitors to watch the live feed of a high-stakes, experimental weapon test—the launch from Hawaii of a hypersonic glide vehicle, a pointy contraption carrying the hopes of U.S. military leaders to beat China and Russia in the race to field a new class of ultra-fast missiles.
On screen was a three-stage rocket sitting on a launch pad at the Kauai Test Facility. It shot into the warm night, in its nosecone a one-of-a-kind, exquisite prototype weapon three years in the making.
Somewhere near the edge of the atmosphere, the booster separated and released the so-called “Advanced Hypersonic Weapon,” which then screamed for 3,800 kilometers at speeds at least five times the speed of sound—actual velocities and trajectory remain classified—to a military test range in the Marshall Islands.
Vice Adm. Terry Benedict, the Navy official overseeing the test, two days later publicly declared the event “very successful.”
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WNU Editor: The Russians have their program .... Is Russia's Hypersonic Weapons Program 5 Years Ahead Of The U.S. Hypersonic Program? (May 31, 2017). The Chinese hypersonic program is also being developed .... Chinese State TV Reveals Pictures On China's New Hypersonic Strike Aircraft (November 9, 2017).
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