Future U.S. hypersonic missiles would not perform as well

The US Department of Defense Research and Development Agency (DARPA) is currently designing hypersonic nuclear missiles that could reach speeds of 1,600 km in less than 30 minutes. However, an MIT physicist recently published a study in the journal Science & Global Security which affirms that these missiles are not revolutionary nor even innovative and that these works are, in reality, only means of attracting financing.

How do you imagine nuclear missiles?

The missiles the United States is looking at, dubbed OpFires missiles, should be tested from 2022. Some researchers are actually touting their performance. Apparently, you could fire a rocket into the air without leaving the atmosphere, like ballistic missiles.

The rocket will then cross the atmosphere at Mach 5, or 6,174 kilometers per hour, which is five times the speed of sound. Once the target is reached, the rocket will dispatch the missile at a similar speed.

Precisely, in addition to these hypersonic missiles, DARPA would also work on miniature rockets to embed these missiles.

A craze that is not shared by all researchers

Indeed, an MIT physicist, David Wright, does not at all share the view of researchers who claim that OpFires missiles are a revolutionary concept. In a study dealing specifically with the subject, David Wright explained that the advertised performances are exaggerated.

He does claim that his computer simulations have shown that hypersonic missiles actually move slower than ballistic missiles. In addition, at the strategic level, these missiles would be detectable by enemy satellites during most of their flight time, although researchers claim that with their “speed”, these missiles would arrive so quickly that the enemy could neither intercept them or prepare for impact.

DARPA refuses to say more about these missiles

David Wright thus maintains that this OpFires missiles only aims to attract funding. However, the Pentagon said (via the New York Times ) that the physicist’s study was biased and his data was out of date. However, the Defense Department did not provide any further explanation.

Regardless, already in 2020 the Pentagon’s budget amounted to $ 3.2 billion for hypersonic weapon research, an increase of $ 600 million from 2019. In any case, l Nuclear Analyte James M. Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said David Wright’s analysis is serious, credible and important.

However, DARPA chief spokesperson Jared Adams said these hypersonic technologies are a confidential topic and the agency is not free to discuss them publicly. For information, the US military is currently studying half a dozen hypersonic weapons.