The hypersonic arms race heats up
December 8, 2017
WASHINGTON – 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. the Daily Beast reports.
The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:
8 Dec. 2017 -- On screen was a three-stage rocket hypersonic weapon sitting on a launch pad at the Kauai Test Facility. It shot into the warm night, in its nose cone 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.
http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/pt/2017/12/the-hypersonic-arms-race-heats-up.html
