Pentagon to test its hypersonic weapons

Bloomberg

The Pentagon plans a “very aggressive” expansion of its hypersonic weapons efforts this year, with at least four initial flight tests of prototypes for glide weapons that can fly five times the speed of sound and maneuver en route, officials said.
A new Hypersonics Transition Office that Congress funded this year will also bankroll a university consortium to conduct advanced research into the weapons and develop a workforce for the new technology, the officials said.
Defense secretary Mark Esper said that the next Pentagon budget proposal will increase funding beyond the $5 billion provided in this year’s five-year budget plan for the technology that he called a key part of the “great-power competition” with China.
“We have significantly ramped up flight testing and other experimentation so that we can accelerate the delivery of this capability — in all its forms — to our warfighters years earlier than previously planned,” Esper said.
Michael Griffin, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, told a congressional committee in 2018 that China has conducted 20 times as many hypersonic tests as the US.
In addition, Russia claims to have fielded a hypersonic boost-glide nuclear warhead for its SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The weapons were elevated to the Pentagon’s top research and development programme in 2017, but until now the effort has been limited to development prior to flight testing.
“By the end of the year we will have flown at least four times with different concepts,” Mike White, the Defense Department’s assistant director for hypersonics, said.
“This year will mark the transition of our development programme” as concepts “have been matured” through ground testing and the design process, White said.
“We have plans to fly prototypes for land-, sea- and air-launched concepts being developed across our portfolio.” He said Lockheed Martin Corp and Raytheon Co are developing the projects as the prime contractors.
“We need to be flying often,” added Mark Lewis, the Pentagon’s director of research and engineering.
He said the hypersonic weapons “are hard to stop, they can manoeuvre, they’re unpredictable” and “hard to detect” so “you don’t have a lot of time” to respond.
Some of the weapons may travel beyond the earth’s atmosphere or be sent from space after separating from a rocket launched from Earth.