Breaking Defense
“We need to accelerate the pace of testing,” the Army’s three-star director of hypersonics says. “Fourth quarter FY23 is when the Army builds [this weapon]; that time is coming really fast. [And] we’re lucky, because when we woke up on the 27th of December and the Russians publicly declared that they had fielded a similar capability, that really put us on a path to accelerate.”
Last year, Lt. Gen. Neil Thurgood took over the Army’s reorganized and renamed Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office (RCCTO), which is now responsible for both offensive hypersonic missiles and missile defense lasers. What kind of acceleration is he talking about?
The weapon that evolved into the Common Hypersonic Glide Body – so-called because it will go on both Army land-launched missiles and Navy submarine-launched ones – has had just four flight tests in nine years. The first, successful flight was in 2011. It took three years to get to the second test, in 2014, which produced no useful data because the booster rocket failed and the glide body never detached. The second successful test took another three years, to 2017; the third test, last month, another three years.
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