ADAPTING EXPERIMENTATION AND TESTING
SPECIAL DELIVERY
The delivery of the first prototype hypersonic hardware to Soldiers of the 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 17th Field Artillery Brigade was completed in October 2021 and marked by a ceremony at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. (Photo by Spc. Karleshia Gater, I Corps)
until they are ready to strike and by then it’s too late to react,” according to Army statements in a March 2023 Congressional Research Service report. Te report further noted that the missile component of the LRHW, developed by Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman Corp., can be fired from surface vessels and submarines.
“Te term ‘hypersonic weapon’ is often confusing,” Farrell said. “Technically, a weapon is hypersonic if it travels faster than five times the speed of sound. But by this measure, nearly all ballistic missiles going back to World War II are hyper- sonic.” Te real difference with today’s hypersonic weapons, he said, is that they combine multiple features that in the aggregate make them very hard to shoot down. Speed, maneuverability (unpredict- ability) and flight at relatively low altitudes (as compared to ballistic missiles) make
modern hypersonic weapons survivable and more likely to reach the intended target.
Te Army and Navy are closely partnered and the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike program and Army’s LRHW program share development efforts and resources. “Te Navy leads the design of the CHGB, while the Army leads its production,” Farrell said. “Previous hyper- sonic technology development has largely resided only within government labs, but recently has significantly transitioned to industry.”
The CHGB is based on the Alter- nate Re-Entry System developed by the Army and Sandia National Laborato- ries. Currently, Leidos Dynetics is under contract to produce CHGB prototypes for the Army and Navy. According to the
congressional report, “Te CHGB uses a booster rocket motor to accelerate to well above hypersonic speeds and then jettisons the expended rocket booster. Te CHGB, which can travel at Mach 5 or higher on its own, is planned to be maneuverable, potentially making it more difficult to detect and intercept.”
“Hypersonic weapons solve the prob- lem of survivability to target,” Farrell said. “Ultimately, hypersonics provide a combination of speed, maneuverability and a flight profile enabling survivable, long-range, rapid defeat of time-critical, heavily defended and high value targets.”
POWERING THROUGH CHALLENGES Accelerated programs like LRHW inevi- tably face hurdles, potentially leading to technical and logistical challenges. While
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