The Drive:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, says it has completed the first successful demonstration of the Operational Fires program’s ground-launched hypersonic missile system capability. The announcement comes right on the heels of the U.S. Air Force disclosing a second consecutive successful test of its Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW, hypersonic missile booster, which took place yesterday.

A press release from DARPA today explained that the Operational Fires (OpFires) program test was executed at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The DARPA release claims that the system met all of its pre-established test objectives. This included the inaugural use of a U.S. Marine Corps 10-wheel Logistics Vehicle System Replacement (LVSR) truck as a medium-range missile launcher, as well as the demonstration of missile canister egress, stable flight capture, and use of U.S. Army inventory artillery fire control systems to initiate the test mission. All of those steps can be seen demonstrated and annotated in the video of the test included below that DARPA released with the announcement…

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