Hypersonic missiles: UK, US, and Australia to boost defence co-operation
The UK, US, and Australia will begin co-operating on research into hypersonic weapons and how to defend against them, the government has said.
The programme will be part of the AUKUS partnership, a security pact announced by the three countries last year.
It follows the development of hypersonic missiles by China and Russia and their purported use by Russia in Ukraine last month.
Hypersonic weapons are those that exceed five times the speed of sound.
They are harder to defend against because of their speed as well as the fact they fly at low altitudes – beyond the line of sight of ground-based radars – and can manoeuvre mid-flight.
The UK does not currently possess hypersonic missiles.
The US and Australia have an existing joint programme to develop the weapons but the UK government stressed the focus of the new venture would be on defence.
It said there were no plans for the UK to develop its own hypersonic weapons but the new programme would help it assess whether it would need to develop them in future.
It added the latest announcement was not related to Russia’s use of the weapons in Ukraine but said the fact other nations were investing in them meant the UK had to think about how to defend against them.
On 19 March, Russia claimed to have used a hypersonic missile to destroy an arms depot in western Ukraine, and US military intelligence has suggested Russian forces have used them repeatedly since.
The attacks would mark the first use of hypersonic missiles in combat.
It came just months after China caught US intelligence by surprise when it tested two nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles.
Each circled the globe in low-orbit space before coming back down to Earth, the second missing its target by only about 24 miles (40 km).
The missile is thought to combine a so-called fractional orbital bombardment system, which sends missiles into a partial orbit of the Earth to strike from an unexpected direction, with a hypersonic glider, which remains in the outer atmosphere and is hard to detect until later into its flight.
The tests demonstrated China had far more advanced space capability than had previously been understood.
North Korea has also claimed to be in the process of testing hypersonic missiles.
Hypersonic missiles are potentially a game-changer in the way future wars will be fought.
As their name suggests, they travel at immense speed – Mach 5 or greater, which equates to around a mile a second. They are what is called “dual capable” meaning they can carry either a conventional explosive or nuclear warhead. They can also be launched from either air, sea or land.
There are two types of these weapon: cruise missiles and glide vehicles. The cruise variant, of which Russia has several, can be launched from an aircraft and hit a target more than 1,200 miles away. The glide variant is launched up into space from where it then glides down to earth on an unpredictable path.
Hypersonic missiles are changing the way nations plan for their strategic defence for two reasons. Firstly, they are so fast there would be very little time – just minutes – between a launch being detected and a country’s leader having to decide whether to retaliate. There is almost no way of knowing whether that missile is nuclear-tipped or not.
Secondly, their flight path, especially that of a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), is so hard to predict it makes interception extremely difficult.
Currently China is in the forefront of hypersonic missile development, closely followed by Russia, which has already used them to hit long distance targets in Ukraine. The US is late to the game and some of its tests have not gone well.
Britain does not possess any and is only now forming an alliance with the US and Australia to carry out research into them and how, if possible, to defend against them.
The AUKUS partnership, announced in September 2021, is a trilateral security pact for the Indo-Pacific region. The primary purpose of the deal is for the US and UK to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
The deal also aims to deepen co-operation on cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and additional undersea capabilities.
Following Tuesday’s announcement, the UK’s national security advisor Stephen Lovegrove said: “When we bring together the technical knowledge and capabilities of our three countries, we can achieve a huge amount to help keep ourselves and our allies and partners safe.
“In light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s more important now than ever that allies work together to defend democracy, international law and freedom around the world.”
See more here: bbc.co.uk
Header image: South China Morning Post
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ant I Potter
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I think it is a little late. Russia flew one around the world last year? How about we stop making weapons and disarm and make peace.
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Freeman
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Russia leads in this technology, not China.
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Mark Tapley
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More fake weapons systems to launder money from the goyim into the “defense industry” insiders pockets. Most propagandized simps have forgotten all about those super expensive “Patriot” missiles that were knocking all of Saddam’s scuds out of the sky. Until it was finally admitted that not 1 Patriot hit any target, except the taxpayers wallet. The same of course was the case for all of those “mobile bio labs” in which the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell got up before the Jew Banker’s U.N. with his little vial of “poison gas.” And where were all of those deadly WMD’s that our Zionist puppet “leaders” and fake congress were warning about. It should now be obvious to the most obtuse that they are being played for a bunch of suckers. No country has used the fake nukes now for almost 80 years since the fake atomic (standard fire bombing) of Japan in 1945, other than in fake “tests” of which I will link below.
Here is the Zionist plan. They are and have been in the process of staging the next world conflict of the Hegelian dialectic (philosopher George Hegel) in which the combined military capability of China and Russia will be arrayed (all controlled as was the first two world wars) against the western powers so as to usher in permanent martial law (Agenda 2030-21) over the global livestock. Unless the Zionists are thrown out of power this is the dystopian future that Orwell warned about.
http://mileswmathis.com/trinity.pdf
https://www.bitchute.com/video/a7RSTEMwWi72/
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Herb Rose
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This article, like most BBC reports, is rubbish. Why is a U.S. B-52 carrying a Russian hypersonic missile? How do you get an object to glide at hypersonic speeds? Was that hypersonic flight around the Earth called the sonic boom heard around the world? Why is the orbit of the hypersonic missile in space a straight line? This is all journalistic hype and conjecture with no science or facts.
Herb
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Howdy
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“Evidence-based assessments are rare, but recent technical analysis has shown that many common beliefs regarding hypersonic weapon capabilities range from exaggerations to outright falsehoods.”
https://allthingsnuclear.org/ctracy/how-do-hypersonic-weapons-work/
https://missiledefenseadvocacy.org/missile-threat-and-proliferation/missile-basics/hypersonic-missiles/
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Mark Tapley
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Hi Howdy:
It makes no difference that most weapons systems are fake. The Zionist insiders and weapons contractors have to keep the goyim in constant fear of the current “axis of evil” in order to justify the massive military budgets while reinforcing the Hegelian dialectic narrative to “get the best deal you can.:” In the same way, the germ theory medical scam has been used now for over a hundred years, not only to rake billions into the insiders pockets but also as another control mechanism. The globalists know that some people are not fooled but as long as the great mass of sheep are true believers in the Zionist propaganda, thats all that matters.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/CFQYA10vTVkd/
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Howdy
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Hi Mark,
I know, you make sense 🙂 I just posted the links for anyone’s interest.
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THOMAS W ADAMS
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One more excellent reason to vote “Scomo” out.
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