New technology targets hypersonic missile threats
Aerojet Rocketdyne is working on technology to help knock highspeed manoeuvrable vehicles out of the sky under a new contract from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Since 2018 DARPA has been developing a hypersonic defence interceptor system called Glide Breaker, which is designed to intercept threatening vehicles moving at hypersonic speeds – at least five-times faster than the speed of sound – in Earth’s upper atmosphere. Aerojet Rocketdyne will develop ‘enabling technologies’ for Glide Breaker under the recently announced contract, which is worth around US$19.6 million.
“Advancing hypersonic technology is a national security imperative,” Eileen Drake, Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and president, said in a statement. “Our team is proud to apply our decades of experience developing hypersonic and missile propulsion technologies to the Glide Breaker programme.”
Developing technologies that can knock incoming missiles or other fast-moving vehicles out of the sky is a priority for militaries around the world. The US has worked on numerous similar ideas over the years, some of which never got off the ground.
One of the most famous mothballed concepts was the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a complex, space-based system championed by President Ronald Reagan; opponents derisively dubbed it ‘Star Wars’.