Hypersonic weapon: New US bomb kills long before you hear it

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Published time: November 18, 2011 15:46
Edited time: November 19, 2011 13:00

Like the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, the Pentagon's Falcon HTV-2 hypersonic plane is part of the Prompt Global Strike program (AFP Photo / Handout / Darpa)

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Arms, Military, USA, War

The US Army has tested a hypersonic missile, which travels six times faster than the speed of sound. It is part of a larger plan to have the capability to strike any place on the planet within an hour.

The missile, called the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW), was launched from Hawaii on Thursday, the Pentagon reported. A rocket delivered it to suborbital altitude, after which the glider went for its target on the Marshall Islands, some 3,700 kilometers away.

It hit less than 30 minutes later, which means its speed was at least 7,400 kilometer per hour, or about Mach 6. An aircraft must be able to fly faster than Mach 5, to qualify as hypersonic.

A Mach number is used to describe the speed of an object or a fluid in comparison to the speed of sound in that medium. Mach 1 means the object travels at the same speed as sound. However the speed of sound may vary depending on such conditions as temperature and composition, so the speed expressed in Mach number is also variable. The now-retired Concorde supersonic passenger planes used to fly at a cruising speed of about Mach 2.

The test was aimed at gathering data on "aerodynamics, navigation, guidance and control, and thermal protection technologies," the Pentagon said.

The AHW is one of several projects of the Prompt Global Strike program. It is aimed at developing several weapons which can be launched from American territory and reach their destinations within an hour.

On August 11 the US Air Force tested another hypersonic glider called the HTV-2. It is faster than the AHW, with speeds reaching 27,000 kilometer per hour. But unlike the Army’s vehicle, it does not work well – the test was aborted due to a technical failure.

The Soviet Union developed ramjet engines capable of hypersonic locomotion and even tested one design, which successfully reached Mach 5.7. The work was stalled by the collapse of the USSR, and no weapon using this technology was ever produced.

Comments (45)

Jerome Brand 17.05.2013 15:50

Wow, Thats one fast piece of ordinance. Lets suppose for a moment that the speed was or is 30000 mph that would be over 500 miles a minute or 8.3 repeating miles a second. You would not even see it as it went by your eye sight.

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Shannon (unregistered) 18.01.2012 09:48

"In God We Trust"Interesting that the United States trusts in God, but if 'God' is not trusted, then they seem to have the biblical right to enforce 'God's' will. I say SEEM because all empires of the last 200 years have had a pseudo-religious basis as their founding, if not directly, but indirectly. Australia is no exception by being conquered by the British in 1788, some say invaded others say colonized, but the fact is the British Empire directly or indirectly enforced a religious creedance on their subjugated 'servants' in Australia, and this is no more apparent than the policies that displaced tens of thousands of Aboriginal Children in the Stolen Generation.How can we oppose this new weapon and the globalized superpower of the United States? Firstly opposition has to be pacifist because if you kill in the name of peace, then? Secondly use the UN forums and structures to vent the opposition, and lastly, never say that there are limited options in opposing this superweapon.

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john doe 08.01.2012 23:42

The leader of axis of evil is China. China can be controled by economically. If the leader is not killed then there is no use killing the underlings like north korea,iran,iraq,afgh anistan. Enemy to democracy and world order is China.

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