Above: the US Army released footage of a live test of C-HGB last year

Harry Pettit – The Sun Feb 10, 2021

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.

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.

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.

A still from a Russian government video shows the Kinzhal hypersonic missile detaching from a MiG-31 aircraft. Some units of the Russian Air Force have already been equipped with hypersonic weapons. Click to enlarge

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.

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.

DF-17 hypersonic glide vehicles on parade in Beijing

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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