Navy Powers Offense with Hypersonic Weapons

Video Above: Hypersonic Missile Breakthrough

By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven

An ability to track and destroy enemy ships at five times the speed of sound, descend upon high-value land targets in minutes from great distances and even intercept incoming anti-ship missiles are things which will soon become realistic when the Navy arms its fleet of destroyers with paradigm-changing, ship-launched hypersonic missiles.

Hypersonic Weapons

“For way too long the Navy has invested in defensive systems. We made a transition to offensive systems and the Navy is leading the way,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee – Defense at a 2023 Budget hearing. Responding to inquiries about the program from Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., Gilday explained how the Army and the Navy were collaborating on a Common Hypersonic Glide Body (CHGB) to support hypersonic weapons systems. The Army plans to field its ground-mobile Long Range Hypersonic Weapon by 2023 and the Navy says its on track to deploy its Conventional Prompt Strike on destroyers by 2025.

The glide body is a warhead which gets thrust into the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds traveling five or more times the speed of sound. Once airborne, the weapon can skip along the upper boundaries of the earth’s atmosphere before relying upon the sheer speed of its descent onto a target. Destruction of a target can be accomplished by the sheer force and speed of impact.

“Our all-up round (CHGB) is a 34-inch booster which will be common between the Army and the Navy. We will shoot exactly the same thing the Navy shoots out of a sub or ship,” Robert Strider, Deputy, Army Hypersonic Project Office, told an audience Aug. 11 at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville Ala.

Citing the promise of the technology and the rapid progress of the program, Gilday said the Navy’s hypersonics program has met every benchmark milestone. He explained this has been in large measure due to the fact that the Navy doubled its hypersonics budget from $.7 billion to $1.4 billion.