The U.S. Air Force is moving forward with plans to develop hypersonic cruise missiles. The service has teamed with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA — the Pentagon’s research arm — to fund development of the technology as part of the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept program, or HAWC. Weapons capable of traveling at hypersonic speeds of at least Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, could operate farther away from targets and with faster response times, according to DARPA’s website on the project. At such speeds — 3,400 miles per hour — a missile could travel from Washington, D.C., to Atlanta in just several minutes.
US Air Force Seeks Hypersonic Cruise Missiles
