US in a hypersonic hustle to catch China, Russia - Asia Times
asiatimes.com
The US aims to arm its warships with hypersonic ship-killing missiles, a move that seeks to catch up with China and Russia while scrambling to land on an
  • emizeko [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    33·
    5 months ago

    article doesn’t mention previous failed attempts

    The U.S. Air Force recently conducted the final test flights of its hypersonic missile program, the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW). The ARRW program was launched in April 2018 and originally planned to achieve initial operational deployment in 2022. However, in November 2023, after conducting two test flights in August and October 2023, the ARRW hypersonic program was officially cancelled.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmygrad.mlOPEnglish
      29·
      5 months ago

      It’s really funny to me how long US has been at trying to develop this tech. Really adorable to watch technologically backwards nations try to keep up.

  • InevitableSwing [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
    19·
    5 months ago

    My prediction is that after failure after failure after failure - congress steps up to fix the problem. They about triple the funding of the program and they make the stipulation that there is effectively zero oversight.

  • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    5 months ago

    My prediction:

    The US has another predator drone situation. They achieve hypersonic missile tech within 10 years, probably within 5, but it’s barely capable of doing what it says on the tin and it’s extremely expensive, likely with a whole lot of inherent flaws and points of failure.

    It’s used mostly to wow aging generals and to provide an aura of military superiority, or at least a semblance of parity, but it’s mostly for show and they are going to get little if any usage in combat settings. It gets touted as the game-changer and it’s promised to put China and Russia on the backfoot, that nobody will dare challenge US superiority in the future and that this will secure the US military legacy for the future.

    Behind the scenes, they never completely shutter development of hypersonic missiles, in order to keep up appearances, but they run it on a skeleton staff and chronically underfund it. The US falls critically behind in cutting edge military tech and it refocuses on countermeasures for rival hypersonic missiles.