US to get new hypersonic weapons ‘test bed’ amid race with China, Russia
- Defence contractor Dynetics and industry partners to provide the new programme, Pentagon says
- United States doesn’t have hypersonic missiles in service and is investing heavily to develop the technology
The Pentagon on Thursday said defence contractor Dynetics and a team of more than 20 industry partners would provide the new Hypersonics Test Bed to boost hypersonic flight testing.
“This … will increase domestic capacity for hypersonic flight testing and leverage multiple commercially available launch vehicles for ride-along hypersonic payloads,” the Department of Defence said in a statement.
Michael White, principal director for hypersonics at the department, said the test bed would “accelerate learning throughout our portfolio of development and demonstration programmes”.
“In order to meet our objectives in hypersonics, we need to be able to launch flight tests much more regularly,” White added.
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Hypersonic weapons can fly at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5. They are also highly manoeuvrable, meaning they can more easily penetrate an enemy’s air defence system and are extremely difficult to intercept.