Pentagon’s Mach 20 Missile Ready for Ultimate Test - the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 - Wed. 7AM PDT -
The Pentagon has been working for nearly a decade on an audacious plan to strike anywhere on the planet in less than an hour. Wednesday could prove to be the do-or-die moment for that plan.
At approximately 7 a.m. PDT, a three-stage Minotaur IV Lite rocket is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It will puncture the atmosphere, and then release an experimental aircraft. That aircraft, known as the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2, will then come hurtling back to Earth at nearly 20 times the speed of sound, splashing down near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 4,100 miles away. Total flight time: about 30 minutes.
That is, if the flight goes as planned. The first HTV-2, launched by Pentagon bleeding-edge research arm Darpa in April of 2010, disappeared over the Pacific after just nine minutes of flight. The vehicle was never recovered.
It was a loss not just for this single effort, but for the entire concept of “Prompt Global Strike,” the Pentagon plan to eliminate its enemies anywhere around the world.
The Defense Department is pursuing three different families of technologies to accomplish the task. One is to rearm nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. But that runs the risk ofaccidentally triggering a response from another atomic power, who might mistake it for a nuke. Oops.
A second effort is to build shorter-range cruise missiles that can fly at five or six times the speed of sound. But that X-51 Waverider project is running into complications: A June flight test ended prematurely, for reasons that are still unclear.
Some variation of the HTV-2 is the third choice; to some in the defense community, it’s the most appealing. The HTV-2 spends most of its time flying through the atmosphere, before it dives down to hits its target. That means it’s unlikely to be mistaken for a nuclear missile, which spends most of its time above the atmosphere. World War III averted.
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