Flying beyond mach 5 is back, decades after the original need-for-speed arms race ended: Going Hypersonic

IT'S OBVIOUS WHY the militaries of the world want missiles that can follow erratic paths at low altitude while flying at five times the speed of sound, eluding any chance at detection or interception. . “Think of it as delivering a pizza, except it's not a pizza,” says Bradley Wheaton, a specialist in hypersonics at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in Maryland. “In the United States, just 15 minutes can cover the East Coast; a really fast missile takes 20 minutes to get to the West Coast. At these speeds, you have a factor of 50 increase in the area covered per unit of time.” · So the question isn't why the great powers are pursuing hypersonic arms, but why they are doing so now. Quick answer: They are once again locked in an arms race. . The wider world first heard of this type of weaponry in March 2018, when Russian president Vladimir Putin gave a speech describing his country's plans for a nuclear-powered cruise missile that could fly around the world at blinding speed, then snake around hills and dales to a target. His bold assertions have been questioned, particularly the part about nuclear power. Even so, a year later a nuclear accident killed seven people near a testing range olf the northern coast of Russia, and U.S. intelligence oilicials speculated that it involved hypersonic experiments.