Though the United States has enthusiastically jumped on the hypersonics bandwagon, key questions about the capability remain.
March 02, 2021 A common hypersonic glide body (C-HGB) launches from Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii, at approximately 10:30 p.m. local time, March 19, 2020, during a Department of Defense flight experiment.
Credit: Flickr/U.S. Pacific Fleet
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According to a February 27 U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) News article, Pentagon officials have outlined a hypersonics strategy, as the United States military seeks to compete with China and Russia in developing and deploying this capability. According to the article, Mike White, principal director for hypersonics in the office of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, outlined a three-pronged strategy for hypersonics involving four implementation phases during the Air Force Association’s virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium last week.
Share Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works plans to begin flight-testing the Speed Racer vehicle in the near future.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has taken the wraps off an experimental, air-launched unmanned aircraft system called Speed Racer that is meant to validate a new manufacturing process as much as a possible new weapon system.
A company-produced video released on the eve of the virtual Aerospace Warfare Symposium that ran Feb. 24-26 reveals a small, jet-powered unmanned aircraft system (UAS) with a hexagonal fuselage, folding and swept wings, plus two sharply canted aft dorsal tails, along with one ventral tail.
By
Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. on March 01, 2021 at 1:26 PM
A B-52 bomber carrying the ARRW.
First, Michael White warned, future tests must not be marred by sloppy mistakes: “If [for example], we forgot how to do a checklist and tighten a pin on a fin, and we lose a flight vehicle because our fin falls off, that’s not acceptable failure. …. Quite frankly, we’ve got a ways to go. I’m not going to be satisfied with the health of the industrial base until we are routinely, successfully flying hypersonic weapons in our prototype development program. And so far we haven’t been able to do that routinely.”
Air Force General: Field This Next-Gen Fighter In Time To Beat China military.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from military.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
By Garrett Reim2021-02-26T23:37:00+00:00
The Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL’s) Golden Horde collaborative munitions programme had its first successful demonstration last week.
The Golden Horde programme intends to network multiple munitions, such as precision glide-bombs and decoys, so that the weapons can exchange information and swarm targets in unison. The first demonstration of the technology last December partly failed due to a software problem.
Source: US Air Force
Golden Horde programme Collaborative Small Diameter Bombs
“Just last week, we took the next step from looking at two collaborative munitions to four collaborative munitions that successfully hit four separate targets all at the same time. This was a great step forward in this programme,” Brigadier General Heather Pringle, commander of AFRL, said during a press conference at the Air Force Association’s Aerospace Warfare Symposium on 24 February.