US successfully tests hypersonic missile in bid to catch up with China and Russia
- Such weapons travel much faster than current ones, can switch direction in flight and are unpredictable, making them much harder to track and intercept
- Moscow claimed to have operable hypersonic weapon in December, while Beijing has displayed its DF-17 hypersonic glide vehicle
The United States announced Friday it has successfully tested an unarmed prototype of a hypersonic missile, a nuclear-capable weapon that could accelerate the arms race between superpowers.
The Pentagon said a test glide vehicle flew at hypersonic speeds – more than five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5 – to a designated impact point.
The test followed the first joint US Army and Navy flight experiment in October 2017, when the prototype missile demonstrated it could glide in the direction of a target at hypersonic speed.
“Today we validated our design and are now ready to move to the next phase towards fielding a hypersonic strike capability,” Vice-Admiral Johnny Wolfe said in a statement.
Hypersonic weapons can take missile warfare, particularly nuclear warfare, to a new – and, for many, frightening – level.