Military

US to Conduct Hypersonic Missile Tests With Australia in 2024

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The US Defense Department plans to carry out joint hypersonic missile tests with the Australian military in 2024, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu said.
Sputnik
"We're already in the process of working very closely with them [the Australian Defense Department] to figure out [to] who do we integrate some of our [hypersonics] experimentations in Australia," Shyu was quoted as saying by the DefenseNews website on Sunday.
She added that the countries had intensified their partnership in hypersonic technologies over the past year and the tests are to be conducted next year.
A hypersonic is a type of vehicle that can move and maneuver at speeds of Mach 5 or beyond.
Military
What is the US Plan for Developing Hypersonic Missiles?
Technology is being developed as part of the second stage of cooperation in terms of the AUKUS partnership between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The second phase of collaboration includes quantum computing, autonomy and electronic warfare research.
The news about hypersonic experiments came after, in March, the US Armed Forces admitted that a hypersonic weapon test failed, the website wrote.
The countries announced the new trilateral defense partnership, AUKUS, in September 2021. The first initiative announced under the AUKUS defense pact was the development of nuclear-powered submarine technology for the Australian navy, prompting the Australian government to cancel its then-estimated $66 billion diesel-electric submarine contract with France's Naval Group. Under AUKUS, the United States plans to sell between three to five Virginia-class submarines to Australia as an interim capability in the early 2030s.
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