The US Air Force announced on Monday that it has successfully tested a hypersonic missile while forcing China, Russia and North Korea to develop the same advanced military technology.
UPI reported over the weekend that a B-52H Stratofortress successfully fired an AGM-1831 Air-Launched Rapid Response Missile (ARRW) at five times the speed of sound.
The tests were conducted somewhere on the Southern California coast.
“This is a huge achievement for the ARRW team for the arms company and our Air Force,” Brig said. This was stated in a statement by General Heath Collins, director general of the US Air Force weapons program.
“The team’s perseverance, experience and dedication has been key to overcoming last year’s challenges and has led us to our final success.”
A B-52H Stratofortress assigned to the 419th Flight Test Squadron was used to launch hypersonic weapons off the Southern California coast over the weekend. (File/Giancarlo Casem/Air Force/UPI)
“We are ready to continue to build on what we have learned and continue to develop hypersonic technology,” he added.
The ARRW is a hypersonic weapon that uses a booster to propel a missile at speeds exceeding Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. The hypersonic glide vehicle disengaged from the launch vehicle and slid towards its target very quickly.
The day before this test, CNN reported that Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall acknowledged that there were problems with the ARRW program.
After North Korea launched a “pseudo-ballistic missile” at sea less than a week after Pyongyang reported that it was testing a hypersonic missile, a report containing the North Korean missile test files was published at a train station in Seoul on January 11, 2022. . (via ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP, Getty)
According to the report, US intelligence agencies secretly caught China testing a nuclear-capable low-orbit hypersonic missile in August. https://t.co/5UsRgr8sbX
– Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 17, 2021
The Pentagon says that since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has used between 10 and 12 hypersonic weapons.
The US Army plans to begin deploying a long-range hypersonic missile in late 2023. Some launch and control equipment has already been deployed so that troops can begin training the system.
The range of the army weapon is less than 2,000 miles, making it less ambitious than the potential nuclear orbital device being tested by China.
Source: Breitbart
