US DoD tests hypersonic glide body

摘要

The US Department of Defense (DoD) successfully tested a hypersonic glide body in a flight experiment conducted from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii, on 19 March 2020. The US Navy and US Army jointly executed the launch of the common-hypersonic glide body (C-HGB), which flew at hypersonic speed to a designated impact point. Concurrently, the Missile Defense Agency monitored and gathered tracking data from the flight experiment that will inform its ongoing development of systems designed to defend against adversary hypersonic weapons. Information gathered from this and future experiments will further inform DoD's hypersonic technology development effort. The event was also a major milestone towards the department's goal of fielding hypersonic warfighting capabilities in the early- to mid-2020s. "This test builds on the success we had with Flight Experiment 1 in October 2017, in which our C-HGB achieved sustained hypersonic glide," said Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfe, director of the US Navy's Strategic Systems Programs, which is the lead designer for the C-HGB.