DARPA tests advanced hypersonic weapon prototype

[Bob369963]

DARPA tests advanced hypersonic weapon prototype, makes railgun sweat

By Mat Smith posted Nov 18th 2011 2:31PM



The US Army completed testing of its hypersonic weapon yesterday, launching a test projectile across the Pacific Ocean. The glider flies at a lower trajectory than typical missiles, traveling at several times the speed of sound, making it capable of hitting anywhere on this peaceful ball of blue and green within an hour. We saw DARPA's hypersonic aircraft's successful launch earlier this year -- the Falcon HTV-2 (pictured above) managed to hit the dizzying speed of Mach 20 during its tests, before it crashed. Despite recent military funding issues in the US government, hopefully all things hypersonic will get to fly again soon.

sourceSpace.com

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[cplmac]

Didn't they just force abort the last launch of this weapon system a couple months ago?

 

[BOT#00001]

Didn't they just force abort the last launch of this weapon system a couple months ago?

Yes, this is the third launch IIRC, but they have both failed at different stages. There are many issues which were unknown until the aircraft had gotten to the right speeds. Each launch has gone through more stages than the last.