What makes these weapons so deadly is that they’re designed to outrun modern air defense systems, and this hypersonic threat has only grown in the five years since Kinzhal’s debut. When it comes to the hypersonic missiles arms race, it seems like the U.S. might be slipping behind Russia or even …
On October 4, America’s newest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, deployed for the first time amid rising tensions across the Pacific and uncertainty about the role these seafaring behemoths will play in the future of warfare. The $13.3 billion Ford is the largest and most expensive warship ever to …
Earlier this year, Russia fired its newest and most dangerous weapon from the belly of a MiG-31 fighter jet. When the hypersonic Kinzhal missile lit its rocket engines and shrieked across the sky at speeds up to Mach 5 toward a target in the Ukraine, it marked the first time a hypersonic weapon has …
Raytheon and Northrop Grumman won a contract worth $985 million to develop the world’s first hypersonic cruise missile. HACM, developed for the United States and Australia, is an air-launched hypersonic cruise missile designed to quickly strike targets on the ground. Under the terms of the …
On March 18, nearly one month into the invasion of Ukraine, a Russian Air Force MiG-31B took to the skies bearing a 26-foot white rocket against its belly, bound for an ammunition depot in western Ukraine. This type of rocket, dubbed the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal—“dagger” in Russian—had only been fired twice …
Launching planes from aircraft carriers via ski jumps went out of vogue years ago. But Chinese scientists believe the desire for hypersonic near-space flights can bring the technique back—at seven times the speed of sound, no less. Using advanced wind tunnel testing at the JF-12 facility, which …
Sometime in mid-March, the U.S Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) tested a hypersonic weapon system ... but didn’t tell anyone. The Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) test took place a few weeks ago, in the midst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the …
