The engineering of next-gen weapons and defense systems is a science built around speed. In 2018, Russia made headlines when President Vladimir Putin revealed the country’s hypersonic missile system, the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, in a sizzle reel video showing the missile blowing up Florida, of all places. Although the video wasn’t quite as sleek as a new iPhone reveal, the message was apocalyptically clear: the era of hypersonic weapons was here.
What makes these weapons so deadly is that they’re designed to outrun modern air defense systems, and this hypersonic threat has only grown in the five years since Kinzhal’s debut. When it comes to the hypersonic missiles arms race, it seems like the U.S. might be slipping behind Russia or even China.
But that might be because the U.S. military has its sights set on a bigger prize: a hypersonic bomber.
Meet the Air Force’s secret hypersonic bomber: the Expendable Hypersonic Multi-mission ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) and Strike program, a.k.a. Project Mayhem.
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The mighty bomber would have a few advantages over its missile-based adversaries, but the big one would be usability. Where missiles like the Kinzhal, Zircon, and China’s Dongfeng-17 are expensive (around $100 million) one-shots, a hypersonic plane traveling in excess of Mach 5—Project Mayhem would reportedly travel Mach 10—could be refueled and used again, and again, and again.
Read more: Popular Mechanics
