The first hypersonic weapons arrive at the American army
The United States Army plans to deliver – just over 200 days after project development begins – the first weapon with hypersonic capability to an operational unit.
According to Lieutenant General L. Neil Thurgood, director of the Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office, the army has sent the necessary equipment to the operational unit for an objective training activity.
The army and industry have collaborated to develop, in the shortest possible time, not only the hypersonic planing nose cone, but the whole related weapon system complete with launchers, special trucks, trailers and the war operations center, all necessary to put together a battery of hypersonic weapons thrown to the ground.
"By the end of this fiscal year, (September), all the equipment the unit needs plus training will be delivered to the unit," Thurgood told Defense News in a February 8 interview.
Lockheed Martin is the Army's hypersonic capability weapon systems integrator that will be launched from a mobile truck. Dynetics was chosen to build the hypersonic glide body for the missile.
Thurgood refused to identify the unit chosen to accept the first hypersonic battery. He noted that the company, battalion and brigade commanders were all selected.
The only element that will not be delivered to the unit until fiscal year 2023 is the strategic ogive. However, on March 8, Thurgood said he will personally deliver the first two training containers for the unit to be used for training the operations chain.
Once the unit has the necessary equipment, it will begin training in October to prepare for the first scheduled joint flight campaign test with the Navy for the first quarter of fiscal year 22, Thurgood said. The unit will also prepare for subsequent tests in the fourth quarter of FY22 and the second quarter of FY23.
In this way the US is trying to catch up with Russia and China which have been developing strategic hypersonic weapons for years now. However, it will take more than a year for the ogive to be fully operational.
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The article The first hypersonic weapons arrive to the American army comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/arrivanp-le-prime-armi-ipersoniche-allesercito-americano/ on Sat, 20 Feb 2021 17:26:02 +0000.