A Pentagon agency reported that it had lost contact with a drone capable of gliding at mach 20 (20 times the speed of sound) on its second test flight in early August.
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) said the Falcon HTV-2 was launched from Vandenberge Air Force Base in California in the style that a space shuttle is launced, i.e. attached to a rocket. The rocket separated from the HTV-2, the drone got up to speed and ground control lost contact.
The aircraft was meant to reach hypersonic speed before it glided into the ocean according to a DARPA chart.
DARPA tweets tracking the experiment read as follows:
"[The mission is] on track, entering glide phase."
26 minutes later it was lost.
"Downrange assets did not reacquire tracking or telemetry," said DARPA an hour later.
"HTV-2 has an autonomous flight termination capacity."
This loss of communication was a failure for the agency. The first test flight of the Falcon drone had lost contact just 9-minutes in. The aircraft is too fast to follow. It begs the question: how many billions in defense dollars are being thrown away on the Falcon drone project?
The glider is part of the DOD's attempt to construct what it terms a "prompt global strike" capability that would enable it to decimate targets across the globe in under an hour with conventional or nuclear warheads.
No comments:
Post a Comment