Aerospace

The Problem with the Pentagon’s Hypersonic Missile

The U.S. military is pouring money into hypersonic research, and it’s making China and Russia —which have their own similar programs — nervous. But the accelerating effort to build missiles that fly at speeds between Mach 5 to Mach 19 is also alarming some in the nonproliferation community. Despite Pentagon officials’ assurances that superfast weapons will carry only conventional warheads, some believe that other nations may well treat any hypersonic launch as a potential nuclear strike.

It’s been a good year for hypersonic researchers, who got a 50 percent bump in the Defense Department’s 2017 budget request. The Air Force plans to test a hypersonic missile by the end of the decade.

The Pentagon, whose long record of hypersonic research stretches from theX-15 rocket plane to the Boeing X-51 scramjet and beyond, is today funding the Lockheed Martin Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 program, the Raytheon Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC), and the Raytheon/Lockheed Tactical Boost Glide.