*WASHINGTON: *The United States announced Friday it has successfully testedan unarmed prototype of a hypersonic missile, a nuclear-capable weapon thatcould accelerate the arms race between superpowers.
The Pentagon said a test glide vehicle flew at hypersonic speeds — morethan five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5 — to a designated impactpoint.
The test followed the first joint US Army and Navy flight experiment inOctober 2017, when the prototype missile demonstrated it could glide in thedirection of a target at hypersonic speed.
“Today we validated our design and are now ready to move to the next phasetowards fielding a hypersonic strike capability,” Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfesaid in a statement.
Hypersonic weapons can take missile warfare, particularly nuclear warfare,to a new — and, for many, frightening — level.
They can travel much faster than current nuclear-capable ballistic andcruise missiles at low altitudes, can switch direction in flight and do notfollow a predictable arc like conventional missiles, making them muchharder to track and intercept.
Even as conventionally armed, non-nuclear weapons, they are viewed byanalysts as raising the danger of conflict, because an adversary might notknow how they are armed when launched.
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The Pentagon is pressing to catch up with rivals Moscow and Beijing in therace to develop hypersonics, even as it recognises they could dangerouslyraise the risks of a nuclear conflict, as countries struggle to builddefences against them.
In its fiscal 2021 budget the US Defense Department requested $3.2 billionfor hypersonic programs, up from $2.6 billion in the current year. The goalis a deployable hypersonic capability by 2023, though that could bedifficult.
“Delivering hypersonic weapons is one of the department’s highest technicalresearch and engineering priorities,” the Pentagon said.
*Russia leading the race*
The joint Army-Navy test was carried out on March 19 from the PacificMissile Range facility in Kauai, Hawaii. The test was for the military’scommon-hypersonic glide body, or C-HGB weapon, designed to be launched froma rocket that could be land-, air- or sea-based. – APP / AFP
