26-11-18 06:07:00,
American R&D catches up to existing Russian hypersonic weapons technology, with planned weapons of similar scope and capability as the goal.
Published
3 hours ago
on
November 26, 2018
The March 1 announcement by President Vladimir Putin that Russia has viable hypersonic weapons was finally accepted and taken seriously by the United States. Now, the American military has placed new urgency on hypersonic weapons development.
In a news piece released by Sputnik News, US Navy Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfe claimed that the Americans are developing a hypersonic weapon. This weapon’s description appears to be of a similar category as Russia’s Avangard hypersonic weapon delivery system. Sputnik continues (emphasis added):
Speaking at the annual Naval Submarine League symposium earlier this month, Wolfe explained that the US seeks the goal of being able to hit any target around the globe at any given moment within a time span of one hour. To do so, they need a hypersonic weapon with a booster that can be launched from any platform.
And by “any” they mean they don’t really know where they would launch it from. Possible variants of the weapon include types launched from surface ships and submarines. Therefore, the development team uses the most stringent requirement: underwater launch from a submarine.
“From a Navy perspective, we’re developing the booster that our hypersonic glide body will go on, and we’re doing it though in such a way that we’re taking the most stringent requirement — which is underwater launch — and so as we develop it we will do it in such a way that as the bigger Navy comes through what platform or platforms they actually want to deploy this on, the launcher and the glide body will be able to survive any of those environments,” Wolfe said.
According to the admiral, the future missile will not only be used by the Navy, but by all other branches of the military, too.
“It will be for all the services as they figure out what platform they want to go deploy a capability like this on,” Wolfe said.