US military conducts hypersonic missile launch experiments at Virginia facility

The U.S. Army and U.S. Navy collected data on their hypersonic missile programs during tests at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Wednesday. 

The Pentagon has prioritized hypersonic missile research in recent years as China and Russia step up development of their own next-generation weapons. 

Hypersonic weapons, which travel at speeds greater than five times the speed of sound, can maneuver in the air and fly at varying altitudes. 

A sounding rocket equipped with experimental payloads was launched Wednesday to provide data on materials and communications systems that can withstand those Mach 5 speeds.

The Pentagon requested $4.7 billion for hypersonic research in the fiscal year 2023 budget, up from $3.8 billion the pervious year, according to a Congressional Research Service report this month.

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Still, some lawmakers have criticized the Department of Defense for falling behind Russia and China in the development of hypersonic weapon systems. 

“Frankly, the Chinese and the Russians just plain got ahead of us,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, told Fox News earlier this year. “If our strategy in the Pacific is based upon aircraft carriers, and an aircraft carrier is vulnerable to a 6,000-mile-an-hour missile, we’re in trouble.”

The U.S. Army is aiming to have offensive hypersonic strike capability ready by next year. The Missile Defense Agency is also taking part in testing for the development of systems to combat adversaries’ hypersonic weapons.