Pentagon conducts test of nuke-capable hypersonic missile
WASHINGTON: The United States announced it has successfully tested an unarmed prototype of a hypersonic missile, a nuclear-capable weapon that could accelerate the arms race between superpowers.
The Pentagon said on Friday a test glide vehicle flew at hypersonic speeds - more than five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5 - to a designated impact point.
The test followed the first joint US Army and Navy flight experiment in October 2017, when the prototype missile demonstrated it could glide in the direction of a target at hypersonic speed.
“Today we validated our design and are now ready to move to the next phase towards fielding a hypersonic strike capability,” Vice Admiral Johnny Wolfe said in a statement.
Hypersonic weapons can take missile warfare, particularly nuclear warfare, to a new - and, for many, frightening - level.
They can travel much faster than current nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles at low altitudes, can switch direction in flight and do not follow a predictable arc like conventional missiles, making them much harder to track and intercept.
Even as conventionally armed, non-nuclear weapons, they are viewed by analysts as raising the danger of conflict, because an adversary might not know how they are armed when launched.
The Pentagon is pressing to catch up with rivals Moscow and Beijing in the race to develop hypersonics, even as it recognizes they could dangerously raise the risks of a nuclear conflict, as countries struggle to build defences against them.
needed, we may go for it (lockdown). All steps are being
The official refused to specify The official refused to specify when private laboratories will start testing but added that it was up to the facilities. “The ICMR will start approving the laboratories as soon as the labs approach, assuring all the requirements have been fulfilled,” the official added.
The health ministry order said all positive cases of Covid-19 will need to be transported to the National Institute of Virology in Pune, and all negative samples destroyed in a week. “Failure to comply with any of the above guidelines will result in legal action,” the order read.
The order came on a day the number of Covid-19 cases in India spiked by the highest quantum since the first case was reported. Over the past 48 hours, the number of cases have jumped by 142, sparking fears of an exponential jump in cases next week.
Also on Saturday, a 41-yearold woman in Pune tested positive for Covid-19, becoming the second patient in India with no history of foreign travel or documented contact with previous cases and fuelling fears that the country had slipped into the deadly third phase of the infection when the contagion spreads rapidly.
At this stage of the outbreak , known as the community transmission phase, the origin of any individual patient’s infection cannot be pinpointed to travel to a global hotspot of the disease, or documented contact with a previously infected person. This means that the virus is freely circulating in the community, making it tough for authorities to control its spread or enforce containment measures.
In countries worst-hit by the coronavirus disease, or Covid-19, such as China, Italy, Iran or South Korea, the number of infections and fatalities rose sharply once the country moved into the community transmission phase.
There are four stages of an outbreak. Stage I is when cases are imported by travellers from other countries, Stage II is when these travellers then pass on the infection locally to people living or working around them, Stage III is when community transmission happens and the health care workers are unable to trace the source of infections, and the last Stage IV is when the disease is widespread in a population.
India is currently in the Stage II of the outbreak, according to the health ministry. Four people have died of the disease in the country.
The case of the Pune woman, confirmed by the National Institute of Virology in Pune, came a day after the government admitted that it had yet not traced the origin of the infection of a 20-year-old Delhi resident who had tested positive in Chennai earlier this week.
The authorities are yet to find out how the Pune woman got the infection. “We are still investigating the case. She must have come in contact with someone who had foreign travel history,” Pune district collector Naval Kishore Ram said.
Late evening, authorities in West Bengal reported that a 57-year-old man, who had not travelled abroad and had no documented contact with a previous patient, had tested positive for Covid-19 – indicating that more cases of people with no obvious origin of infection were showing up across the country.
The case was confirmed by two state government laboratories but not by the NIV, the national nodal authority, at the time of going to print.
On Friday, India expanded its testing protocol for Covid-19 patients. The revised strategy, after the third meeting of ICMR constituted task force on testing on Friday, also included asymptomatic direct and high-risk contacts of a confirmed case who should be tested between day 5 and day 14 of coming in contact with a laboratory posi“if tive case. “Direct and high-risk contact include those who live in the same household with a confirmed case and healthcare workers who examined a confirmed case without adequate protection as per WHO recommendation,” the circular read.
The health ministry order came on a day the Empowered Committee for Covid-19 response met for the first time.
The meeting was co-chaired by Dr. Vinod Paul, Member NITI-AAYOG and K. Vijay Raghavan, principal scientific advisor to the government .
With an estimated 280,000 tests as of March 20, Germany has conducted more tests than several other European countries combined.
For context, Italy, has conducted 26% fewer tests.
Mass testing helps Germany monitor the fatality rate as it allows officials to detect cases that show no symptoms, and thus have a much better chance of survival if cases are detected in nascent stages, scientists say
Another key factor is the age of the patients infected in Germany.
According to official data, the majority of confirmed patients in Germany are under the age of 60 – over 80% – which also explains the low death rate. In Germany, the median age for Covid-19 patient is 47 years, while in Italy, it is 63 years. In fact, more than 70% of patients in Italy are above the age of 50, according to government statistics.
However, the German government struck a note of caution as many of the cases remained in the early stages of the coronavirus.
“We are at the beginning of an epidemic… Over 1,000 people have already survived the virus. But many will also get seriously ill. And we have to be able to provide them with medical care,” Wieler told local news outlets last week