US flies back into hypersonic fast lane as it tests air-breathing weapon

Name: China tests hypersonic aircraft Starry Sky-2
Uploaded: 2021-09-30T13:00:32.000Z
Duration: 1 min 2 s
Description: China tests hypersonic aircraft Starry Sky-2

Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept has its first successful free flight in eight years

Americans making up for lost time after prioritising other areas while China and Russia forged ahead, experts say

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The Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept had its previous successful free flight in 2013. Illustration: Reuters

Minnie Chan

Published: 9:00pm, 30 Sep 2021Updated: 10:12pm, 30 Sep 2021

The United States has tested an air-breathing hypersonic weapon that flies faster than five times the speed of sound, in what military experts saw as the US recovering lost ground after China and Russia moved ahead in the field.

The first successful free flight since 2013 of the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) took place on Monday under a partnership of the US Air Force and the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), although most details were being withheld, the agency said.

The flight came two months after Russia said it had successfully tested a 3M22 Zircon anti-ship hypersonic cruise missile, which President Vladimir Putin claimed was “part of a new generation of missile systems without equal in the world” because of its speed of Mach 7. The Russian missile is also an air-breathing weapon.

The US missile, built by Rytheon Technologies, was an air-launched vehicle released from an aircraft seconds before its Northrop Grumman scramjet engine kicked on, Darpa said, adding that the test took it “one step closer to transitioning HAWC” to offer “next-generation capability to the US military”.

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China tests hypersonic aircraft Starry Sky-2

“The HAWC vehicle could operate best in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, where speed and manoeuvrability make it difficult to detect in a timely way,” Darpa said. “It could strike targets much more quickly than subsonic missiles and has significant kinetic energy even without high explosives.”