Pentagon leaders want to build hundreds of hypersonic weapons as soon as possible based on a few prototypes
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon has created a war room to ramp up production of hypersonic weapons from a handful of prototypes over the last decade to hundreds of weapons in the near future. Breaking Defense reports. Continue reading original article
The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:
5 May 2020 -- Those weapons will range from huge rocket-powered boost-glide missiles fired from Army trucks and Navy submarines at more than Mach 10, to more compact and affordable air-breathing cruise missiles fired from aircraft at speeds of a relatively modest Mach 5-plus.
Inconsistent focus and funding over the years means that “we had a number of programs in the department that were very solid technology development programs, but at the end of those programs, we would have prototypes and we’d have weapons in the single-digit counts,” says Mark Lewis, modernization director for Pentagon research chief Mike Griffin.
“If you’ve got a program that delivers eight missiles and then stops, well, which of the thousand targets in our target set are we going to use those eight missiles against," he asks.
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John Keller, chief editor
Military & Aerospace Electronics
