US falls behind in the hypersonic race

In a dash to catch up with China and Russia, the Pentagon’s hypersonic missile programme is being bedevilled by false starts and failed tests. ith America’s potential adversaries moving at a rapid pace to develop and deploy weapons capable of reaching targets at more than five times the speed of sound, the US has now suffered three setbacks in a row. The test of one of the most advanced systems, the US Air Force’s air-launched rapid response weapon (ARRW), had to be aborted after a technical fault prevented the prototype missile from being launched from a B-52H Stratofortress bomber. There had been two previous failed tests in July and April. In the inaugural flight of the ARRW on April 5 over a range off the coast of southern California, the missile also failed to leave the aircraft. In the July test, the prototype was successfully launched from a B-52H but the rocket engine failed to ignite properly. The air force says valuable lessons were learnt from all three tests but the failures are being seen as a serious disappointment at a time when the Pentagon is anxious to demonstrate to China and Russia and other potential adversaries such as North Korea that America’s hypersonic weapons programme is on track and approaching operational status. The latest failure of the ARRW system followed public criticism of the Pentagon’s hypersonic achievements by Frank Kendall, secretary of the air force. The service’s most senior civilian official said he was dissatisfied with the pace of the programme. The sense of urgency about developing weapons capable of hitting targets in minutes has been heightened by the apparent success by both China and Russia in testing hypersonic missiles that can carry both nuclear and conventional warheads. President Putin declared last month that Russia’s Zircon hypersonic cruise missile, to be launched from a submarine, would be ready for delivery to the navy next year, following a claimed successful test launch in October. There has been speculation in the Russian media that the first Zircon might even be introduced into service this week. Russia has also developed a hypersonic glide vehicle called Avangard which Moscow claims can accelerate to Mach 27 – more than 20,000mph. Glide vehicles are launched from a ballistic missile on the edge of space and then manoeuvre through the earth’s atmosphere. China shocked the Pentagon in August when it carried out a test of a rocket-launched glide vehicle that circled the globe in low orbit before descending at hypersonic speed , missing a land-based target by about 20 miles. Had the vehicle been carrying a nuclear warhead, a “miss” on that limited scale would be irrelevant. The Pentagon has multiple hypersonic programmes underway, costing about $15 billion between 2015 and 2024. More than 50 per cent of the investment is being spent on boost-glide technology. The US is only developing non-nuclear systems.