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Last August Lockheed Martin, the Air Force, and DARPA tested the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV-2), which traveled 20 times the speed of sound and could hypothetically deliver a bomb anyplace on the planet inside one hour. It was a spectacular failure that was much publicized by the press, but no details about what went wrong were made available — until now.

The Pentagon shot two unmanned space vehicles into Earth's orbit in April, underscoring its efforts to develop a super fast, high-altitude weapon system that could dominate from above even the highest-flying jet fighters. The Washington Times reported that the U. S. Air Force, which has jurisdiction in space, launched the troubled X-37B space plane for the first time. The unmanned plane piggybacked on an Atlas rocket into orbit. Once in orbit, it behaves much like the Space Shuttle, descending into Earth's atmosphere and then landing like a plane. The vehicle has been in development for more than 10 years and...

Cruise missiles are highly accurate but they have to be fired from a distance and they take a fair amount of time to get where they are going. So they are great for fixed targets, but their limitations have left the Pentagon scratching its head for half a decade trying to find something that can be launched and hit its target anywhere in the world within an hour or so. One of the key drivers behind this effort has been to develop a weapon that could kill a terrorist like Osama bin Laden anywhere in the world without having to...

A new U.S. launcher based on strategic missile hardware made its successful suborbital debut April 22, but the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) lost contact with the payload, an experimental hypersonic vehicle, soon thereafter, the agency said April 23. DARPA’s Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV)-2 was the first in a series of flight experiments meant to demonstrate technologies that could be the foundation for the United States’ next long-range conventional missile. It was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., atop a Minotaur 4 rocket. Built by Lockheed Martin Corp., the HTV-2 craft was supposed to glide over...