By Jim Morris, Warrior Vice President, News
The US, UK and Australia are taking another step under the trilateral AUKUS defense agreement – this one aimed at developing hypersonic missiles for submarines.
Under what the Pentagon called a landmarked agreement announced earlier this month, the three countries will enhance facilities and information-sharing on the weapons, which fly and maneuver at speeds of at least Mach 5. The partnership is being called HyFliTE (Hypersonic Flight Test and Experimentation project).
“We are increasing our collective ability to develop and deliver offensive and defensive hypersonic technologies through a robust series of trilateral tests and experiments that will accelerate the development of hypersonic concepts and critical enabling technologies,” said Heidi Shyu, the under secretary of defense for research and engineering.
The Pentagon says there will be up to six flight test campaigns by 2028 with a budget of $252 million.
For 15 years now, the US and Australia have been collaborating on hypersonic research. This new agreement brings the UK into the partnership. It’s part of what’s called AUKUS Pillar II – technology sharing and advanced capabilities development. AUKUS began as an agreement to develop submarines.
UK Defence Minister John Healey called the new pact a historic agreement that will allow the three nations to “stay at the forefront of battle-winning defense technology.”
A little more than a year ago, the Wall Street Journal published a story arguing that China and Russia were far ahead of the US in the race for hypersonic missiles. It noted that China had tested a missile that traveled at more than 15,000 miles an hour – roughly 20 times the speed of sound.
The Journal said that Russia’s on the weapons also was concerning the Pentagon, although its missiles are viewed as being not as sophisticated as those built by China.
On November 21, Russia launched what it called a new hypersonic missile, one that carried multiple conventional warheads to a target in Ukraine. It was seen as Moscow’s response to the US and UK allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied missiles to hit targets inside Russia.
As for the US, the Army, Navy and Air Force are all working on their own hypersonic missiles. Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are in a competition to build scramjet-powered missiles as part of a hypersonic weapons programs run by the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
