Navy Hypersonic Prototype Travels 109 Nautical Miles in 2 Minutes & Hypersonics to Fire from Submarines in 2028

By Kris Osborn – Warrior Maven

The US Navy has fired an emerging hypersonic “prototype” round as far as 109 nautical miles in only two minutes, marking a potential breakthrough in the realm of high-speed attack at five-times the speed of sound.

Hypersonic Missile Launch 

Weapons developers describe the projectile as a “hypersonic body shape,” and say that the prototype was fired at White Sands Missile Range from an electromagnetic gun.

“We were able to gather data, prove the ability to gather data in hypersonic regimes and take that data and share it with academia and our partners. We were able to prove our models, test out our components, technologies and subsystems,” Adam Jones, Advanced Hypersonic & Guided Weapons Division Head, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, told an audience last year at the 2022 Sea Air Space Symposium.

Several key areas of ongoing inquiry, likely to be greatly advanced by this prototype shot, are what Jones referred to as boundary layer transition and thermal heating. Each of these are crucial areas of hypersonic flight necessary to ensure flight path trajectory, speed, targeting and in-flight thermal stability. 

Temperature is, among other things, crucial to hypersonic flight as projectiles traveling at Mach 5 speeds can easily overheat and either explode or veer off course. To counter this risk, engineers regularly build hypersonic projectiles with special advanced, heat resistant materials to ensure a smooth, uninterrupted flight path. 

These dynamics also pertain to Jones’ comment about “boundary layer,” a term referring to the air flow surrounding a hypersonic projectile. Weapons developers work to ensure that the air flow or “boundary layer” surrounding the weapon in flight is “laminar” or smooth, as opposed to “turbulent.” A turbulent air flow can cause molecules to move around between layers surrounding the projectile and possibly cause the round to overheat or simply veer off course.