The Drive:
As the threat of hypersonic weapons continues to grow, one of the Pentagon’s top research and development arm is moving ahead with a new project to explore ways to guard against them. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Glide Breaker project will look into various “component technologies” needed for one or more defense systems, but will focus heavily on a hard-kill interceptor to knock the fast-flying weapons out of the sky.
DARPA showed off concept art of the interceptor portion of Glide Breaker for the first time at its D60 Symposium, which honors the organization’s 60th anniversary, in September 2018. The agency’s Tactical Technology Office had previously hosted a gathering to explain the project and its requirements to interested parties in July 2018.
“The objective of the Glide Breaker program is to further the capability of the United States to defend against supersonic and the entire class of hypersonic threats,” DARPA said in an announcement for the July 2018 “Proposers Day.” “Of particular interest are component technologies that radically reduce risk for development and integration of an operational, hard-kill system.”
