Air Force Magazine:

To increase coordination and resources for hypersonic weapons development, the House Armed Services Committee included a “National Hypersonic Initiative” in its version of the National Defense Authorization Act. The House panel wants the Pentagon to produce a report, due early in 2023, on how it will build up the hypersonics industrial base and testing infrastructure and what the effort will cost over five years.

In its markup of the fiscal 2023 NDAA, the House committee “notes the multiple programs and efforts” in hypersonics across the armed services and defense agencies but also the “limited industrial base and workforce with the requisite knowledge and infrastructure” needed to develop and test these systems. The HASC is “interested in the potential of an initiative to address current gaps” in the hypersonics development infrastructure “as well as to accelerate production and fielding.” Besides the Air Force, the Navy and Army are pursuing hypersonics programs, as are the Missile Defense Agency and NASA.

Pentagon and industry officials welcomed the attention to hypersonics but said much of what the language calls for is already happening…

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