Hypersonic Weapons Face Major Milestone In August Test

[unhappycamper]

http://breakingdefense.com/2014/03/hypersonic-weapons-face-major-milestone-in-august-test/



Hypersonic Weapons Face Major Milestone In August Test
By Colin Clark on March 18, 2014 at 4:30 AM

CAPITOL HILL: Prompt Global Strike is a program to build a weapon that can destroy targets anywhere on earth within an hour of getting targeting data and permission to launch. Sandia Lab and the Army may have found the answer: the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon.

So far, some aspects of PGS have attracted controversy. When the Pentagon wanted to explore putting a conventional warhead on a Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile, many Democrats and some allies expressed concerns about how the Russians and other nuclear powers might react to a ballistic missile arcing towards a cave in northern Pakistan. While highly technical arguments bubbled behind the scenes about just what trajectory such a missile would take and whether it could be easily misinterpreted, the military kept pressing ahead with other technologies.



The other programs are the Air Force’s Conventional Strike Missile (CSM) and the DARPA/Air Force HTV-2 program (pictured above). The Air Force and DARPA, who pursued other technologies, weren’t nearly as successful as the Army’s system.

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It was the first time a Sandia-developed booster had flown a low-altitude, long-range horizontal flight path at the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere; the first time eight grid fins (designed by Sandia and Huntsville, Ala.-based Dynetics Corp.) were used to stabilize a US missile system; and the first time a glide vehicle flew at hypersonic speeds at such altitude and range.