The U.S. Military Must Go Hypersonic

O ften in history, the biggest science and engineering experiments are conducted in secrecy. The Manhattan Project is the most prominent example, but stealth and the Global Positioning System also come to mind. However, on other occasions, the most cutting-edge programs are being carried out in plain sight. The development of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), with the early program’s numerous public failures, is a strong case. Today, the direct science and technology descendent of the missile race of the 1950s, the development of hypersonic glide bodies, is similarly unfolding in full view of America’s citizens and the world as the Multi-Service Advanced Capabilities Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB).

In late 2022, the Pentagon announced that its Test Resource Management Center would work with Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, in Indiana, to create a common test bed for defense agencies and universities to test glide bodies designed to operate at speeds of Mach 5 to 8, the range assigned to “hypersonic” vehicles as well as the materials and components (warheads, command and control nodes, control surfaces) that accompany them. Dynetics, a subsidiary of Leidos, was contracted to be the program integrator, while Kratos Defense & Security Solutions took the lead in developing the common test bed platform. The project’s first flight lifted off from RocketLab’s launch facility at Wallops Island, Va., in June 2023, utilizing a derivative of that company’s Electron rocket. In September of that same year, the MACH-TB team signed an agreement with Stratolaunch, LLC, the brainchild of Microsoft founder Paul Allen and Scaled Composites genius Burt Rutan. Stratolaunch provided the dual-fuselage lift aircraft as well as its Talon rocket to carry the test platforms first to altitude and then to hypersonic speeds. So far, the MACH-TB program has conducted but a handful of flights, and not all of them have been “successful” in satisfying every stated goal of the flights. However, the fact is that during this “research” stage of the development of the hypersonic glide bodies that might one day sit on top of U.S. military missiles, the intent is to gain as much data during each flight and often pursue a “test to failure” strategy, and to this extent, the program has been a tremendous success with a strategy that has proven itself over time.

When the United States first started to develop its missile force, its rockets often blew up. When the Thor missile was being developed, six of ten test launches resulted in failure. Similarly, both the Atlas and Titan ICBMs experienced significant test failures prior to reaching stable design and launch processes. Even in our modern era, SpaceX, perhaps the most cutting-edge high-tech firm operating, pursues a test-to-failure philosophy in the development of its newest rockets, including the massive “Starship.” Ironically, in hypersonic flight testing, the United States is working hard to recover ground that it voluntarily gave up.

During the 1950s, the United States led the world in the development of aircraft and missiles designed to operate at hypersonic speeds. Beyond the Thor IRBM and two ICBMs already mentioned, three X-15 test aircraft were built by the North American Aviation Company and conducted 199 test flights from 1959 to 1968, exceeding Mach 5 and often operating about 50 miles in altitude. Additionally, all of NASA’s 135 space-shuttle missions were launched and glided back through the earth’s atmosphere essentially as hypersonic glide vehicles. However, because these missions were conducted under the auspices of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, much of the data associated with these programs has become publicly available to the global scientific community, providing both Russia and China with a head start on their own hypersonic programs.

The challenge facing the U.S. military today is designing a glide vehicle that can maneuver at hypersonic speeds in a survivable manner while maintaining communications with its controllers, all while carrying a warhead. Because of the high speeds, designers must compensate for alterations in glide-vehicle profiles either through the expansion of materials from heating or, alternatively, the ablation of materials due to friction. Additionally, vehicles operating at hypersonic speeds experience the buildup of a plasma shield around them due to friction-induced heating of atmospheric gasses. Such plasma fields often interfere with communications with the vehicle, a concern when attempting to update a maneuverable platform during a mid-flight course change or final approach to a moving target. Make no mistake: The maneuverability of boost-glide hypersonic vehicles is the reason why every major power in the world is interested in them.

When ballistic missiles were first built, there was no way to defend against them. Because of their high speeds, they could not be shot down by artillery, aircraft, or even other missiles. However, beginning with the Reagan administration, the United States and, later, other nations began to invest in the technology necessary to target and kill ballistic missiles. This was possible because once the rocket propelling a missile warhead burned out, the warhead itself continued an unalterable, ballistic path that could be predicted. Hypersonic glide vehicles can be programmed or directed in flight to maneuver left, right, up, or down from their ballistic path, providing them with the nearly 100 percent survivability rate previously assigned to ICBMs before the advent of ballistic-missile defense. Much as with the development of ICBMs and the shocking impact of “the Sputnik Moment,” whichever nation achieves an initial operational capability of a hypersonic glide weapon will temporarily have a first-mover advantage in the global military competition, resulting in an inherently unstable arrangement.

The MACH-TB program has entered a new stage of its development. Recently, its organizers described the next steps in test platform development as “MACH-TB 2.0,” with some significant hints at platform maturation. The MACH-TB program plans to fly eight times over the next year as a ramp towards flying 50 flights per year beginning in fiscal year 2026. That is an aggressive, accelerated goal. This is not surprising given that the program itself was designed to accelerate the maturation of associated technologies by years, and, based upon congressional plus-ups to the program, it appears they’re succeeding. As it stands, the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee has added $30 million to the program. Its counterpart in the Senate added $150 million to the Pentagon’s budget for MACH-TB.

Big things begin in small places like Crane, Ind. For decades, analysts and strategists have highlighted the importance of “revolutions in military affairs” and the need for a “third offset” on a similar scale to our nation’s previous investments in nuclear weapons, stealth aircraft, and precision-guided weapons. Hypersonic weapons will be a crucial component of the next generation of the American military, and they need to be developed as rapidly as possible, not because they will provide us with the generational advantage that precision-guided weapons supplied beginning in the 1990s, but because they will catch us up to where our adversaries, China and Russia, already are. MACH-TB provides the means to rapidly experiment and innovate in this critical area of research and development. It is a small program that promises outsized strategic returns on investment.