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N.Korea joins race for new hypersonic missile with latest test By Sangmi Cha Tuesday's launch latest in series of new weapons tests U.S., Russia recently tested lower-altitude hypersonic weapons Expert: Speeds suggest N.Korea test may have been a failure SEOUL, Sept 29 (Reuters) - North Korea test-fired a newly developed hypersonic missile this week, state news media KCNA reported on Wednesday, joining a race headed by major military powers to deploy the advanced weapons system. North Korea fired the missile off its east coast towards the sea on Tuesday, South Korea's military said, as Pyongyang called on the United States...

The United States tested an advanced hypersonic missile system last week that will “offer next generation capability” to the US military, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said on Monday. The test flight comes just a few months after Russia tested a similar missile. The US missile system, called a “Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept” (HAWC), was developed by the aerospace and defense giants Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman. During the test, which was carried out in partnership with DARPA and the US Air Force last week, the missile was released from under the wing of an aircraft, and...

Hypersonic weapons could well transform the strategic balance. The United States’ adversaries recognize this fact — Russia and China have both tested hypersonics and appear to have prioritized integrating them into their combat forces. The U.S. must do the same — or accept a strategic balance in our adversaries’ favor. The Washington news cycle typically overlooks subtle yet consequential policy choices. Biden’s FY2022 defense budget request of $715 billion constitutes a functional decrease from the previous budget — its $11 billion “increase” does not keep pace with inflation. Although the Obama administration’s most robust technologists, former Undersecretary of Defense Robert...

It's a fairly small aircraft, with a length of just 21 meters (68.8 feet). But after a tough year for the airline industry, it symbolizes a big step forward in aviation history as the first privately built supersonic aircraft. Every other supersonic aircraft up to this point — the European Concorde flown until 2003 and the Soviet Tu-144 flown until 1999, as well as many fast military aircraft — was funded by billions from state coffers and built with government mandates. Startup Boom Supersonic from Denver in the US is different. It unveiled the first privately manufactured supersonic jet last...

Hypersonic cruise missiles which travel five times the speed of sound, are one step closer to being part of Australia’s arsenal. Last week Australia and the United States signed a new agreement to collaborate on developing and testing hypersonic cruise missile prototypes. When completed, the missiles will be able to traverse the distance of Sydney to Melbourne in just seven minutes. The missiles are difficult to stop not only because of their speed, but for their ability to slip past radar systems by gliding along the edge of the atmosphere. Hypersonics can also alter their route mid-flight. The weapons are...

Hypersonic attack drones will definitely exist, the question simply is when. The prospect of surveillance drones or armed unmanned systems catapulting through space at five times the speed of sound, is already on the radar at high levels at the Pentagon. ypersonic attack drones will definitely exist, the question simply is when. The prospect of surveillance drones or armed unmanned systems catapulting through space at five times the speed of sound, is already on the radar at high levels at the Pentagon. “You can think of autonomy and hypersonics being integrated in the way you fly vehicles and the things...

Over the last decade, two of the most significant topics in defense research and development have been directed energy systems and hypersonic weapons. The Department of Defense and its major contractors have been pushing the boundaries of what is possible with these technologies and those efforts could someday soon literally change the face of warfare forever. As it turns out, these two cutting edge areas of defense research are beginning to converge in laboratories with the goal of enabling unprecedented levels of speed for aerial weapons. By combining advanced directed energy technology with the latest in hypersonic vehicle design, researchers...

Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted Sunday of nearing deployment of nuclear-tipped hypersonic missiles with his Navy, upping the ante in a three-way arms race with the U.S. and China to develop super-fast missiles that can penetrate any existing defensive system. At the annual naval parade in St. Petersburg, Putin did not detail specifically when hypersonic missiles would be deployed, but the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the weapons are in the final stages of testing. "The widespread deployment of advanced digital technologies that have no equals in the world, including hypersonic strike systems and underwater drones, will give the...

President Vladimir Putin said the Russian navy will get 40 new ships this year, as he attended a naval parade in St Petersburg on Sunday marking the country's Navy Day. The parade in the port city and the nearby town of Kronshtadt featured 200 ships and vessels and over 4,000 troops and aimed to 'demonstrate the growing power of our navy,' Putin said on Friday. He said 40 ships of different classes will enter service this year, and that the Russian navy will be equipped with hypersonic weapons to boost its combat capabilities. Opening the parade, he said that 'six...

Stratolaunch's website now reveals that the company has reinvented itself as a builder, tester and operator of hypersonic vehicles — those that can travel at least five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5. The huge plane is key to this new mission, hauling vehicles aloft to test various payloads in the extreme environments imposed by hypersonic flight. Those vehicles will include Stratolaunch's Talon-A, a 28-foot-long (8.5 m), 6,000-lb. (2,722 kilograms) reusable craft capable of reaching Mach 6. The huge dual-fuselage plane — which used to be called Roc, but is now apparently known as the Stratolaunch Carrier —...

It’s the punch you don’t see coming, goes the boxer’s adage, that knocks you out. Hypersonic missiles are that latest military punch. Fast, yes. But more importantly, unpredictable, slipping past the digital eyes of military tech that watches for ballistic haymakers swinging out into space, not for glide vehicles skipping along the edge of the atmosphere. Pentagon officials said on March 2 they are setting up a “hypersonic war room” to ensure that the U.S. industrial base is up to the task. The same day, the Secretary of the Army said they will test-fire two missiles this year as the...

The U.S. Defense Department has awarded a multimillion-dollar contract for a system that would knock threatening missiles out of the sky. A company called Aerojet Rocketdyne was awarded $19.6 million to develop “enabling technologies” for the system, which will be known as Glide Breaker, it said earlier this month. “Advancing hypersonic technology is a national security imperative,” Eileen Drake, Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and president, said in a statement. “Our team is proud to apply our decades of experience developing hypersonic and missile propulsion technologies to the Glide Breaker program.” The Glide Breaker program is part of America’s efforts to counteract...

The aerospace giant had named its hypersonic concept vehicle Phantom Express. That moniker is now oddly appropriate, since the spacecraft will never take physical form. Experimental Spaceplane, previously known as XS-1, aimed to nurture the development of a reusable vehicle that could help loft satellites cheaply and rapidly. Indeed, DARPA wanted the craft to be capable of launching 3,000-lb. (1,360 kilograms) satellites into orbit 10 times in 10 days, at a cost envisioned to drop eventually to around $5 million per mission. DARPA initiated Experimental Spaceplane in 2013. In 2017, the agency selected Boeing for the second and third phases...

I’m as much a Sci-Fi fan as most anyone. I’ve read my fair share of Orson Scott Card books, seen all the Men in Black movies, think it’s a travesty that Firefly got canceled, and have sat through every cringy second of every lame attempt to improve on the original Star Wars trilogy, but until the past few months, I’d never seriously considered even the remotest possibility that humans may not be alone, at least on this planet and in this solar system.  But here we are, and if anything should unite humanity in an era seemingly as divided as...

In the course of his lengthy annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly this year, President Vladimir Putin excoriated the United States for abandoning the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty while asserting that “the work on promising prototypes and weapon systems that I spoke about in my Address last year continues as scheduled and without disruptions.” Putin went on to say that Russia had entered serial production of the Avangard hypersonic glide system, which was to be deployed later in 2019. He added that the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, which he asserted was “of unprecedented power,” was in the...

"Hypersonics is like stealth. It is a disruptive technology and will enable various platforms to operate at two to three times the speed of the Blackbird,” Carvalho told Aviation Week. “Operational survivability and lethality is the ultimate deterrent. Security classification guidance will only allow us to say the speed is greater than Mach 5.” The successor to Lockheed Martin’s SR-71 Blackbird, the Mach 3 long-range recon aircraft that once tore across the skies like a Cold-War era arrowhead before its retirement in 1999, may be inching closer toward reality. According to Aviation Week, a handful of visitors to the SAE...

CHILLING photos have been leaked onto the internet which some fear show China's top secret 11,509mph hypersonic rocket system aimed at dodging US defences. Images of the impressive Jia Geng No 1 rocket have emerged on Chinese media and could rock Donald Trump's defence chiefs at the Pentagon. The pictures are said to show a prototype missile measuring 8.7 meters (28.5 feet) from tip to tail and weighing in at nearly four tonnes. It appears equipped with supersonic combustion ramjets - or scramjets - which suck in air at supersonic speeds leading to a much higher velocity. Scramjets can theoretically...

Could this be a forerunner of Zircon? This model of an experimental hypersonic missile was displayed in 2016 by TsIAM. (Photo: Vladimir Karnozov) While addressing the Russian Federal Assembly on February 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin touched on the Zircon, describing it as “a hypersonic missile able to accelerate to about Mach 9.” The Russian president said this is “yet another innovation, work on which proceeds successfully and shall be completed on schedule.” It has a firing range of “over one thousand kilometers” (540 nm) and “is able to destroy both sea-going and land targets,” he added. Notably, Putin’s figures...

The head of Russia’s armed forces said Tuesday that it was imperative the country’s military develop ground-based cruise and hypersonic missiles by 2020 to counter rising threats from the U.S. and the West. In particular, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said during a conference call, the military will be looking at developing a ground-based version of the sea-launched Kalibr missile within the next two years, a requirement ahead of creating a longer-range hypersonic missile system. “The General Staff has submitted to the supreme commander-in-chief a list of measures, which he has approved. In 2019-2020, we need to develop the ground-based version...

As Russia and China get closer to actually fielding nuclear-armed hypersonic ICBMs, the Pentagon has been hard at work on a pair of concepts designed to meet the threat. In addition to developing its own hypersonic missiles, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is also working on a game-changer of its own: ‘Counter-hypersonics.’ As reported by Warrior Maven, DARPA is working on an interceptor that can take on incoming hypersonic warheads traveling at speeds in excess of Mach 5. As such, the secretive agency is soliciting proposals for a concept known as “Glide Breaker,” which seeks to “develop...