{"id":253091,"date":"2022-05-05T07:27:01","date_gmt":"2022-05-05T07:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=253091"},"modified":"2022-05-06T07:31:39","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T07:31:39","slug":"hypersonic-missile-delay-puts-u-s-further-behind-russia-and-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=253091","title":{"rendered":"Hypersonic-Missile Delay Puts U.S. Further Behind Russia and China"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Anthony Capaccio \u2013 Bloomberg April 6, 2022<\/strong><\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li>Pentagon hoped to declare Lockheed missile ready by Sept. 30<\/li>\n<li>Lawmakers criticized defense secretary for slow progress<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The first U.S. hypersonic weapon will be delayed for as long as a year under a new schedule, even as lawmakers protest that the Pentagon is lagging behind in a new technology that Russia has already used in Ukraine and China has demonstrated in a space launch.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_195700\" style=\"width: 380px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/DF-17-hypersonic-glide-vehiclepng.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-195700\" class=\"wp-image-195700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/DF-17-hypersonic-glide-vehiclepng.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"370\" height=\"231\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/DF-17-hypersonic-glide-vehiclepng.png 480w, https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/DF-17-hypersonic-glide-vehiclepng-300x188.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 370px) 100vw, 370px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-195700\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">DF-17 hypersonic glide vehicles on parade in Beijing<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The goal to declare an \u201cearly operational capability\u201d for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/quote\/LMT:US\">Lockheed Martin Corp.<\/a> missile by Sept. 30 has been moved back to sometime in the next fiscal year, according to an Air Force statement. The Pentagon has said the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW, is expected to be the \u201cnation\u2019s first operational hypsersonic weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hypersonic weapons are hard to track and destroy because they fly five times the speed of sound and can be maneuvered. Last month, Russia debuted a hypersonic air-to-ground missile in its attack on Ukraine, and in July China hit a demonstration target on Earth with a weapon in orbit. Adversaries don\u2019t have to meet the rigorous standards set under the U.S. defense acquisition system or face public scrutiny over delays and failure.<\/p>\n<p>The Lockheed missile failed three consecutive booster motor tests last year, leaving it behind in passing two additional motor tests and at least one of a fully assembled missile.<\/p>\n<p>Now, \u201cdue to recent flight test anomalies,\u201d the first test of the entire missile has shifted to the period between Oct. 1 and Dec. 30 with additional tests planned later in the next fiscal year, according to the Air Force statement. It said the service intends to declare an early operational capability \u201cafter successful demonstration of operational utility\u201d through tests of the complete missile after the booster demonstrations.<\/p>\n<p>If the weapon is deemed to have a nascent combat capability, leftover test missiles could be used in an emergency because the Air Force has delayed a formal production decision.<\/p>\n<p>The Air Force weapon was thought to be further along in development than either Army or Navy programs. Those services are using a shared two-stage booster to launch the warhead into hypersonic flight and haven\u2019t been flight-tested yet.<\/p>\n<p>With the delays, \u201cDoD officials now seem to be signaling that ARRW will not be the first hypersonic weapon fielded by the United States,\u201d said Kelley Sayler, a Washington-based missile technology analyst who follows the program. The latest delay \u201csuggests that the Air Force may be struggling to address the findings of the failure review board\u201d after the most recent test failure in December, she said.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Heated Exchanges<\/strong><\/h2>\n<div id=\"attachment_239098\" style=\"width: 370px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/A-Zircon-hypersonic-missile-is-launched-from-Russian-Naavy-frigate-Admiral-Gorshkov.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-239098\" class=\"wp-image-239098\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/A-Zircon-hypersonic-missile-is-launched-from-Russian-Naavy-frigate-Admiral-Gorshkov.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"235\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-239098\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Russian Zircon hypersonic missile. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The slower pace of U.S. hypersonic programs prompted a number of heated exchanges when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin testified Tuesday before the House Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou recently called in the defense industrial community that were involved in the hypersonics development as to how we can speed that up,\u201d Republican Representative Mike Turner of Ohio said. \u201cWe\u2019re behind our adversaries.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Without denying that, Austin said \u201cwe have to be careful\u201d because \u201chypersonic is a capability, sir, but it\u2019s not the only capability.\u201d He said \u201cI have engaged industry\u201d to \u201cmake sure that they\u2019re leaning into\u201d hypersonic development.<\/p>\n<p>Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has signaled impatience with what\u2019s now a $1.4 billion development effort. The service has budgeted only $46 million in procurement funding in the fiscal 2023 request and none through 2027, according to the service\u2019s five-year plan. With congressional approval, the $46 million would be shifted into continued research<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDespite the setbacks, significant learning from each test event\u201d has taken place, and the Air Force \u201cplans to revisit a procurement decision in fiscal 2024 once specific programmatic milestones have been achieved,\u201d according to the service\u2019s statement.<\/p>\n<p>Jay Pitman, Lockheed\u2019s vice president for strike weapons, said in a statement that the company \u201cunderstands the urgent need for hypersonic capabilities\u201d and \u201cto fulfill that need, we are committed to developing ARRW at a highly accelerated pace while building on our history of developing first-of-its-kind technology.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lockheed was awarded an initial $480 million development contract in April 2018 that was broadened in December 2019 to $986 million.<\/p>\n<p>The ARRW\u2019s delays so far haven\u2019t revealed a fundamental problem but rather difficulty with how the weapon works with the B-52H bombers that would launch it. After it\u2019s dropped by the bomber, the ARRW is supposed to be accelerated by its booster motor before a solid glide body separates and flies at hypersonic speeds to its target.<\/p>\n<p>The December failure, for example, was caused by a design interface issue resulting in a \u201cvoltage instability during transfer from aircraft power to missile batteries\u201d that led to a mission abort, according to the Air Force.<\/p>\n<p>Separately, Lockheed and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/quote\/AJRD:US\">Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc.<\/a> recently completed a second flight test for a different hypersonic weapon in early development with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that might replace the ARRW if its canceled.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2022-04-06\/hypersonic-missile-delay-puts-u-s-further-behind-russia-china\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US is lagging dangerously behind in one field of weapons technology. As both Russia and China have hypersonic weapons operational and deployed <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":116633,"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":[78,23,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-china","category-Fringe_Science_New_Discoveries_and_Developments","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253091","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=253091"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":253094,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253091\/revisions\/253094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/116633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=253091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=253091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=253091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}