THE US military is equipping a new type of high-tech missile that’s too fast to shoot out of the sky, a service official has revealed.
The Army hopes to deliver the hypersonic weapon, which travels at over 3,800mph, before the end of the year.
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Speaking to DefenseNews, Lt. Gen. L. Neil Thurgood said that an Army unit is already being sent equipment to train soldiers to use the missile.
Generals hope to have the unit ready for testing within the next 200 days, Thurgood, who is director of the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO), explained.
“By the end of this fiscal year, which is in September, all of the equipment that the unit needs plus training will be delivered to the unit,” he said.
Hypersonic missiles are a new type of weapon that travel so quickly that modern missile defence systems cannot intercept them.
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They are described as being hypersonic because they travel at least five times the speed of sound, or roughly a mile per second.
The weapons can be modified to carry nuclear warheads.
Russia and China have also confirmed they’re working on the high-speed systems, which are expected to proliferate over the next decade.
Analysts fear they will make war more likely by putting rival nations on “hair-trigger” states of readiness.
According to DefenceNews, the US Army is focussing its current efforts on a ground-launched hypersonic weapon battery.
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Working with Lockheed Martin, it’s producing the launchers, trucks, trailers, and battle operation centre needed to put together such a system.
Thurgood declined to name the unit that the first missile would be sent to.
Training will begin in October, he said, with potential tests scheduled for late 2022 and early 2023.
It’s not clear what missile the Army will be testing. In October 2020, the military released footage of a test of its Common-Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) missile, which can travel at up to Mach 17, or 3.6 miles per second.
The weapon is said to have hit within six inches of its intended target.
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The US is in a race with Russia and China to deploy the first operational hypersonic missile.
The weapons can be launched by land, sea and air, with the capacity to deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in the world within minutes.
Travelling with the speed of a ballistic missile, the technology has the advantage of being easily manoeuvrable, like a cruise missile.
This makes them rapid, accurate and difficult to detect.
Experts have previously warned that nations armed to the teeth with hypersonic missiles could cause destruction on an epic scale.
Terrifying space weapons of the future
Here are three of the scariest…
Rods from God
- A strange but utterly terrifying weapon has been dubbed “rods from the God” and is based on the concept of creating man-made meteorites that can be guided towards the enemy.
- Instead of using rocks rods the size of telephone poles are deployed.
- These would be made out of tungsten — a rare metal that can stand the intense heat generated by entering Earth’s atmosphere.
- One satellite fires the rods towards the Earth’s atmosphere while the other steers them to a target on the ground.
- Reaching speeds of 7000mph they hit the ground with the force of a small nuclear weapon — but crucially creating no radiation fall out.
- As bizarre as it sounds, a US Congressional report recently revealed the military has been pushing ahead with the kinetic space weapons.
Molten metal cannons
- This intriguing idea is being developed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
- It is called the Magneto Hydrodynamic Explosive Munition or MAHEM.
- This game changing rail-gun can fire a jet of molten metal, hurled through space at several hundred miles per second by the most powerful electromagnets ever built.
- The molten metal can then morph into an aerodynamic slug during flight and pierce through another spacecraft or satellite and a munition explodes inside.
Space force ships
- Already the United States is powering head with its spacecraft, although China is busy developing one of their own.
- The top secret American XS-1 under development by DARPA.
- It can travel ten times the speed of sound and launch missiles.
- Meanwhile an unmanned craft is currently being developed in the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Centre in Mianyang, Sichuan province, which is also known as Base 29.
Richard Speier, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, a research organisation, said the high-speed weapons could lead nations to become “trigger-happy”.
“Hypersonic missile proliferation would increase the chances of strategic war,” Speier said in a 2017 report on the technology.
“It would give nations an incentive to become trigger-happy.”
The RAND Corporation said it was deeply worried about the risk of small nations getting their hands on the technology.
It said China, US and Russia should commit to a “hypersonic missile nonproliferation” agreement immediately.
RAND warned that we have just a decade to “substantially hinder the potential proliferation of hypersonic missiles and associated technologies”.
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n other news, the US military is developing a laser can ID terrorists by scanning their heartbeats from 650 feet away.
The US’s $550million nuke bomber plane that can hide from Russian and Chinese missiles is nearly ready.
And, the US Navy Seals and Royal Marines are looking to kit out their special forces with 50mph Iron Man-style jet packs.
What do you think of the new weapon? Let us know in the comments!
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
