{"id":227537,"date":"2021-02-11T07:57:02","date_gmt":"2021-02-11T07:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=227537"},"modified":"2021-02-13T07:04:27","modified_gmt":"2021-02-13T07:04:27","slug":"us-army-to-equip-first-hypersonic-missile-five-times-the-speed-of-sound-this-year-in-arms-race-with-china-and-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=227537","title":{"rendered":"US Army to equip first HYPERSONIC missile \u2018five times the speed of sound\u2019 this year in arms race with China and Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Above: the US Army released footage of a live test of C-HGB last year<\/span><\/p>\n

Harry Pettit \u2013 The Sun Feb 10, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The Army hopes to deliver the hypersonic weapon, which travels at over 3,800mph, before the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Speaking to DefenseNews<\/a>, Lt. Gen. L. Neil Thurgood said that an Army unit is already being sent equipment to train soldiers to use the missile.<\/p>\n

Generals hope to have the unit ready for testing within the next 200 days, Thurgood, who is director of the Army\u2019s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO), explained.<\/p>\n

“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,”\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n

Hypersonic missiles are a new type of weapon that travel so quickly that modern missile defence systems cannot intercept them.<\/p>\n

They are described as being hypersonic because they travel at least five times the speed of sound, or roughly a mile per second.<\/p>\n

The weapons can be modified to carry nuclear warheads.<\/p>\n

Russia and China have also confirmed they’re working on the high-speed systems, which are expected to proliferate over the next decade.<\/p>\n

Analysts fear they will make war more likely by putting rival nations on “hair-trigger” states of readiness.<\/p>\n

According to DefenceNews, the US Army is focussing its current efforts on a ground-launched hypersonic weapon battery.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

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<\/p><\/div>\n

Working with Lockheed Martin, it’s producing the launchers, trucks, trailers, and battle operation centre needed to put together such a system.<\/p>\n

Thurgood declined to name the unit that the first missile would be sent to.<\/p>\n

Training will begin in October, he said, with potential tests scheduled for late 2022 and early 2023.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The weapon is said to have hit within six inches of its intended target.<\/p>\n

The US is in a race with Russia and China to deploy the first operational hypersonic missile.<\/p>\n

The weapons can be launched by land, sea and air, with the capacity to deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in the world within minutes.<\/p>\n

Travelling with the speed of a ballistic missile, the technology has the advantage of being easily manoeuvrable, like a cruise missile.<\/p>\n

This makes them rapid, accurate and difficult to detect.<\/p>\n

Experts have previously warned that nations armed to the teeth with hypersonic missiles could cause destruction on an epic scale.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

DF-17 hypersonic glide vehicles on parade in Beijing<\/p><\/div>\n

Richard Speier, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, a research organisation, said the high-speed weapons could lead nations to become “trigger-happy”.<\/p>\n

\u201cHypersonic missile proliferation would increase the chances of strategic war,\u201d Speier said in a 2017 report on the technology.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would give nations an incentive to become trigger-happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0RAND Corporation said it was deeply worried about the risk of small nations getting their hands on the technology.<\/p>\n

It said China, US and Russia should commit to a “hypersonic missile nonproliferation” agreement immediately.<\/p>\n

RAND warned that we have just a decade to “substantially hinder the potential proliferation of hypersonic missiles and associated technologies”<\/p>\n

Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia and China already have hypersonic weapons fully operational and deployed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":227541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Fringe_Science_New_Discoveries_and_Developments"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=227537"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227542,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227537\/revisions\/227542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/227541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=227537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=227537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=227537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}