On October 7, 2021, at a ceremony held at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington, the first prototype hypersonic gear is delivered to soldiers serving in the 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 17th Field Artillery Brigade.

Huntsville, Alabama — The director of the Army’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies Office stated that the U.S. Army is readying itself for a significant test of a hypersonic weapon by the U.S. Navy, which would assist decide the course of a cooperative research program.

In an interview with Defense News on March 27 at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Global Force Symposium, Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch stated, “The Navy is moving forward on their test, which isn’t a launch out of ground support equipment, but just off a stool launch, so we get another look at the missile.”

According to him, the Army will test the missile in the summer from a ground-based launcher following the Navy’s Common-Hypersonic Glide Body test. We’ll be at the range this summer, assuming all goes according to plan.

Hypersonic weapons are challenging to detect because they may travel across different altitudes and reach speeds more than Mach 5, or more than 3,836 miles per hour. The warhead, guidance system, cabling, and thermal protection shield of the weapon comprise the C-HGB.

The United States is competing to develop technologies to fight off hypersonic missiles and to produce the necessary capabilities. Hypersonic weapon development and testing are underway in China and Russia.

The spring test is limited to missile performance and is carried out on a test stand that does not have a launcher, canister, or ground support equipment.

Rasch said that the missile is essentially being told to ignite and then to follow its own course through the first and second stages, the payload adapter, the hypersonic glide body separation, and other phases.

According to him, the test is to make sure the services are aware that the missile functions as intended.

In parallel, the Army is making sure that the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon’s (LRHW) ground support apparatus functions properly so that the missile and launcher may be matched in a subsequent test, according to Rasch.

The Army will decide whether to let the vendor start assembling such tactical rounds if the Navy test is successful. They are arranged and prepared, each at a distinct level of completion. Rasch stated, “I’ve been holding them because I want to witness the entire performance.

Because no hypersonic weapon has ever been developed in the United States by the commercial sector, the Army has been collaborating with Leidos’ Dynetics for a number of years to develop the industrial basis for the weapon glide body that will be utilized by the Navy and the ground service.

In order to assemble the first weapon battery, the military also manufactured launchers, vehicles, trailers, and the battle operations center independently. The Army’s weapon system integrator for its hypersonic capabilities, which will be launched from a moving vehicle, is Lockheed Martin.

According to Rasch, if the Army test is successful, the rounds will be prepared for delivery to the first unit with the necessary capabilities.

Two days before the end-of-FY21 fielding date, the military delivered the first hypersonic weapon capability—minus the all-up rounds—to the 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 17th Field Artillery Brigade unit of I Corps at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.

The initial schedule called for training on the apparatus and receiving those rounds in the autumn of 2023; however, due to a number of unsuccessful or postponed tests, that date has been moved farther out.

Due to “challenges at the range,” the Army and Navy were forced to postpone their flying tests in March, October, and November of last year, according to Rasch.

“Clearly, we learn every time we conduct these tests—even when there isn’t one,” Rasch stated. However, in this instance, the round had to be reopened in order to make a few adjustments. These difficulties weren’t with the round; rather, they were with starting them up, which requires effort.

“Gave us a little time to stop and kind of reflect on where we had not done enough developmental testing,” the testers said of the testing halt during the rounds’ evaluation. It goes without saying that there is danger associated with a program advancing as quickly as RCCTO’s on hypersonics, according to Rasch. “You’re running with scissors and doing acquisition at the same time.”

According to him, the Army examined previous component-level testing to determine any gaps that the military could have had.

“Over the past few months, we have conducted a number of walk-ups to ensure that we fully understand the phenomenon occurring and how to replicate it repeatedly so we can identify the error,” Rash said.

According to Rasch, the Army is testing the ground support equipment in high fidelity even this week, mimicking every detail of the shot to ensure that it captures “all the phenomena to allow us to get back out to the range.”

Even if the initiative is running behind schedule, Rasch pointed out that the Army and the Navy are moving rather quickly for a program of this kind.

In less than two years, the service—which began with a blank sheet of paper in March 2019—became capable of delivering hardware, such as an operations center, four transporter-erector-launchers, and the modified trucks and trailers that make up the LRHW’s ground equipment.

“This is a challenging issue. The majority of missile programs in this field have lasted between ten and twelve years, if you look at their history,” he stated. “This is not just a new missile; it’s a new missile type as well. Oh, and we had to create new command-and-control capabilities and ground support equipment for it. That was a huge task, then.