Science & Tech
Hypersonics Test Shows the US Is Catching Up in the New Missile Race
But questions remain about costs and priorities remain.
By Patrick Tucker
Technology Editor
September 30, 2021
Air Force
Missiles
Last week’s successful demonstration of a hypersonic glide vehicle is a “step in the right direction” in closing the research and testing gap between the United States and rivals Russia and China, a top Air Force technologist said this week. But the United States still has ground to cover in deploying highly maneuverable hypersonic weapons and defenses against them, Brig. Gen. John M. Olson, the Mobilization Assistant to the Chief of Space Operations and the Air Force’s acting Chief Technology and Innovation officer, told Defense One during a State of the Air Force panel on Tuesday.
Last week, Olson’s service and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency conducted a free flight test of its Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, or HAWC, which dropped from a jet and lit off its supersonic combustion ramjet.
“The engine compressed incoming air mixed with its hydrocarbon fuel and began igniting that fast-moving airflow mixture, propelling the cruiser at a speed greater than Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound,” DARPA said in a statement this week.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/09/hypersonics-test-shows-us-catching-new-missile-race/185759/
