IRIA News

The U.S. military successfully tested a hypersonic missile in mid-March but decided to keep it a secret to avoid the escalation of tensions with Russia as President Joe Biden was set to embark on an important visit to Europe.

The test was conducted on the west coast with Lockheed Martin’s Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) launched through a B-52 bomber. This was the first-ever successful Lockheed Martin’s hypersonic weapons system test.

After the initial aerial launch, the HAWC system propelled the missile to achieve speeds of Mach-5 and above. According to some unofficial details released by U.S. defense officials, the HAWC missile reached heights of more than 65,000 feet and also flew at lower heights with an average speed of 3800 miles per hour, it took the missile less than 5 minutes to complete 300 miles distance.

HAWC program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office Andrew Knoedler said, “This Lockheed Martin HAWC flight test successfully demonstrated a second design that will allow our warfighters to competitively select the right capabilities to dominate the battlefield. These achievements increase the level of technical maturity for transitioning HAWC to a service program of record.”

According to the DARPA’s release, “Air-breathing vehicles utilize air captured from the atmosphere to achieve sustained propulsion. The speed and maneuverability of such hypersonic cruise missiles allow both evasion of defenses and quick strikes.”

Lockheed Martin Skunk Works vice president and general manager John Clark said “Our work with DARPA and AFRL on the HAWC program demonstrates that air-breathing hypersonic systems are a cost-effective solution to address rapidly emerging threats in the global security arena. The success of this flight test is evidence that a strong partnership between government and industry is key to solving our nation’s most difficult challenges and enabling new capabilities to counter threats to U.S. and allied forces.”

The U.S. test of the hypersonic missile came only days after Russia carried out the first-ever hypersonic missile attack on Ukraine. The Russian military used its indigenously produced Kinzhal hypersonic missile in western Ukraine to take out a target that they claimed to be an ammunition warehouse. Russia’s use of hypersonic missiles to take out a stationary target was deemed as an effort to show off its hypersonic capabilities in real-life war scenarios.

The U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin downplayed Russia’s use of hypersonic missiles by stating that he does not see hypersonic missile technology as some sort of ‘game changer’ in modern warfare while the Pentagon’s press secretary also stated that he finds it hard to understand what exactly is Russia’s justification to use a hypersonic missile against a stationary storage facility.

Russia’s Kinzhal missile is a hypersonic variant of its Iskander short-range ballistic missile that is equipped with a booster engine capability to achieve hypersonic speeds. However, the U.S. HAWC missile has a more sophisticated air-breathing scramjet engine that allows more control and accuracy at higher speeds. So far, no variants of HAWC missiles have warhead capabilities, instead, these missiles rely on their own speed and kinetic energy to destroy the target.

The U.S. military carried out its hypersonic missile test at a time when U.S. President Joe Biden was on an official trip to Europe along with the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, to participate in the NATO summit, G7 meeting and to visit Poland to have a closer understanding of the Ukraine refugee crisis.

Recently, the U.S. administration has been careful about its military decisions and weapons tests to avoid unnecessary escalation of tensions between Washington and Moscow. On April 1, the U.S. military canceled a scheduled test of its Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) to avoid any kinds of misinterpretations from Russia. The test was previously postponed in early March for the same reason as the defense analysts advised that Russia may misinterpret the motivations behind such tests from the U.S. military at sensitive times and use it to escalate the tension between the two countries.

The hypersonic missile test was the second successful test for the HAWC technology and the first successful test for Lockheed Martin. In September 2021, the U.S. Air Force successfully test Raytheon’s HAWC hypersonic missile that was powered by Northrop Grumman’s scramjet engine.

The recent hypersonic missile test was deemed successful as it met all the objectives defined by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The U.S. had put a special emphasis on improving its hypersonic missile technology following Russia and China’s successful hypersonic missile tests. Following the same notion, the Biden administration has requested $7.2 billion for long-range missiles including hypersonic missile technology.