Air Force awards massive hypersonic-weapon contract to Lockheed Martin
Such weapons could replace nuclear weapons- along with EMP weapons.
Read the rest at the link.After repeated warnings that Russia and China have each developed a hypersonic missile that could punch through U.S. missile defenses, the U.S. Air Force says it will spend an estimated $1 billion to develop one of its own.
The service announced Wednesday that it has awarded Bethesda, Md.-based defense giant Lockheed Martin a $928 million contract to design, develop and test an air-launched hypersonic strike weapon, which would travel far faster than the speed of sound. One official described the plan as being the second of two U.S. efforts to do so. The other is a project jointly managed by the Air Force and DARPA, the Defense Department’s weapons development agency, called the Tactical Boost Glide program.
Both are part of a program to develop advanced prototypes that can later be fielded on U.S. jets.
“The Air Force is using prototyping to explore the art of the possible and to advance these technologies to a capability as quickly as possible,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said.
Lockheed Martin executives have emphasized hypersonic aircraft and weaponry as an area of intense interest.
“We are committed to the development of state-of-the-art hypersonic technologies, and we are excited to get to work on the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon program,” Jon Snyder, Lockheed Martin’s vice president for Air Force Strategic Programs, said in an emailed statement.
Defense Department officials have warned publicly that hypersonic weapons could punch through U.S. missile defenses, which are meant to protect the United States from a nuclear first strike. Anything traveling faster than Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, is considered hypersonic and may be too fast for some systems to shoot down.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, during an address to his nation last month, boasted that the Russian military had developed and tested a hypersonic missile, and U.S. officials have said that China has a similar capability.