First unit fielding an Army hypersonic missile in 2023

The military is planning two more tests of its hypersonic missile before sending it to the first unit by the end of 2023.

The Navy is a co-developer of the missile with the Army and the next milestone will mark the first time the Army and Navy will launch the complete missile together using ground support equipment. Lt. Gen. Robert Rasch, chief of the service’s Rapid Capabilities and Critical Technologies office, did not disclose the timing of the tests for security reasons, originally reported by the Army Times’ sister publication Defense News.

The latest two test flights follow more than a decade of the service developing and testing missile capabilities. One of the first test flights took place in 2010, only for the project to be put on hold by the service. The army reopened work on the missile program five years ago at the start of a major modernization campaign.

Each of the two services worked on the development of a part of the missile. The Army developed the Common Hypersonic Glide Body, while the Navy developed a two-stage hypersonic missile booster stack. Previous tests have yielded mixed results.

In early 2020, the hypersonic missile test at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii was successful, officials said. But the missile’s booster stack failed in another test in late 2021. In June 2022, the stack completed a successful test flight.