The US-Russian-Chinese Hypersonic Arms Race Is Now On

Lockheed-Martin awarded $1bn to start developing the US hypersonic cruise missile

If the hype is true Russia and China are quite a bit ahead as of now

Hypersonic weapons have long been considered a potentially revolutionary weapon that permanently alter the battlefield of the future. By flying at speeds of over Mach 5 (3,836 mph, 6,175 km/h), missiles or ballistic projectiles would not only be far harder to engage and destroy with defences designed to combat incoming supersonic weapons, but their extremely high inertia would make these missiles extremely destructive even if they carried no warheads.

Russia and China have already claimed to have not only created, but even deployed hypersonics, though the credibility of this remains an open question. Nevertheless, the US Air Force seems to be taking the threat of a new Sputnik Moment to heart with the new contract that tasks Lockheed with the design, development, engineering, systems integration, test, logistics planning, and aircraft integration support of an American hypersonic stand-off missile beginning in the 2018 fiscal year.

“This effort is one of two hypersonic weapon prototyping efforts being pursued by the Air Force to accelerate hypersonics research and development,” says Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek in a statement. “The Air Force is using prototyping to explore the art-of-the-possible and to advance these technologies to a capability as quickly as possible.”

Source: New Atlas

2 Comments
  1. believein1 says

    So they want to steal technology from another country to benefit financially?

  2. Z54 says

    Russia is almost ready to deploy their S-500 which is suppose to employ Hyper-sonic projectiles as at least part of the system. It looks like the US is really playing catch up as far as hypersonic weapons are concerned.

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