The Army has released new footage of an experimental hypersonic missile warhead that is believed to be the 'super duper missile'...
The Army has released new footage of an experimental hypersonic missile warhead that is believed to be the 'super duper missile' promised by President Donald Trump.
The footage, from a March 19 test at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, was released during the online Space and Missile Defense Symposium on Tuesday.
It shows the joint Army-Navy common hypersonic glide body (C-HGB) that is being developed for launch from both land and submarine.
Hypersonic re-entry vehicles travel at extremely high speeds and are able to maneuver unpredictably in comparison to traditional ballistic missiles, making them impervious to most missile defense countermeasures.
New footage shows the joint Army-Navy common hypersonic glide body (C-HGB) that is being developed for launch from both land and submarine
Although the Army has not revealed how far or fast the C-HGB flew in the test launch, the Pentagon has previously said that this weapon would allow the Army and Navy to 'strike targets hundreds and even thousands of miles away' and that it will get up to a speed of Mach 17, according to The Drive.
The new video was unveiled by Army Lieutenant General L. Neil Thurgood, the Director for Hypersonics, Directed Energy, Space and Rapid Acquisition within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology.
'It gets off the pad pretty quick,' Lieutenant General Thurgood said, narrating the footage. 'It gets pretty high pretty fast.'
The video shows clips of the missile on the launch pad, and then clips of lift-off and flight.
The footage, from a March 19 test at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii, was released during the online Space and Missile Defense Symposium
The video shows clips of the missile on the launch pad, and then clips of lift-off and flight
'It gets off the pad pretty quick,' Lieutenant General Thurgood said, narrating the footage. 'It gets pretty high pretty fast'
The video montage ends with a clip of the boost-glide vehicle actually hitting its mark. 'That is the explosion at the other end,' Thurgood said.
It was unclear whether the test missile had an explosive payload, or whether the clip shows a kinetic impact.
According to the Pentagon, the Missile Defense Agency monitored and gathered tracking data from the test flight that will help in the development of systems designed to defend against adversary hypersonic weapons.
Trump in May said the military was building 'incredible military equipment,' which he only loosely described, in a likely reference to a hypersonic missile.
'We have, I call it the Super Duper Missile, and I heard the other night 17 times faster than what they have right now, when you take the fastest missile we have right now,' Trump said. 'You've heard Russia has five times and China's working on five or six times, we have one 17 times and it's just gotten the go ahead,' Trump said.
It comes as Russia and China both make strides in hypersonic missiles, threatening to upend the longstanding status quo in nuclear war doctrine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in December boasted of his country's hypersonic arsenal when he unveiled a land-based variant of the 'unstoppable' missile with speeds of Mach 9 (7,000mph).
However, the Russian Navy's top officer later admitted the country's hypersonic Zircon cruise missile is suffering 'childhood diseases.'
Admiral Nikolai Evmenov said these issues - which he did not elaborate on - would take at least a few years to resolve before the 3M22 Zircon becomes operational.
And in January, China released rare footage of its nuclear-capable, hypersonic missile DF-26 being launched during a military exercise.
The mighty weapon, commissioned to the People's Liberation Army in 2018, is able to reach US territory and destroy aircraft carriers, according to previous reports.
Beijing did not reveal the time or location of the exercise, but footage of the launch was recently released by the country's state broadcaster China Central Television Station.
The clip was also shared by the Rocket Force, part of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) which handles Beijing's growing missile arsenal.
The Rocket Force of the People's Liberation Army of China released footage of a missile being launched from a desert during a military drill. State media China Daily then confirmed that the missile was DF-26, a medium-to-long-range missile said to be able to reach the United States
The military division did not mention the model of the missile in the video shared on Saturday on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter.
The clip shows a missile being launched from a desert.
'The rocket rose into the sky like a giant, flaming dragon, piercing through fog and clouds and charging towards vast space,' the troop wrote.
State media China Daily confirmed that the missile was DF-26 or Dongfeng-26, a medium-to-long-range missile said to be able to reach Guam, a US territory about 2,000 miles from the Chinese coast.
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