US set to develop ‘global strike drone’
The so-called Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle, which would be designed to hit targets about 9,000 miles away, should be available by about 2025. Hypersonic means travelling at more than five times the speed of sound.
The goal is to demonstrate a system that could carry out prompt “global reach missions” without using overseas bases, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s cradle of new technologies, said in a notice released quietly two weeks ago.
“DARPA and the Air Force share a vision of a new transformational capability that would provide a means of delivering a substantial payload from the continental United States to anywhere on Earth in less than two hours,” the notice said.
“This capability would free the US military from reliance on forward basing to enable it to react promptly and decisively to destabilising or threatening actions by hostile countries and terrorist organisations,” said DARPA, which is jointly sponsoring the project with the US Air Force.
Some of the system’s building blocks should make it possible to launch a “prompt global strike” from the continental United States as early as about 2010 using rocket boosters.
The programme envisions a reusable, remotely piloted craft that could take off from a regular runway with 5,443kg of bombs and missiles or a new, rocket-assisted means of delivering such munitions.
The project is called FALCON, short for Force Application and Launch from CONUS, or the 48 states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, that make up the continental US.
Jan Walker, a DARPA spokeswoman, described the effort as “technology development and demonstration,” as opposed to a plan to build, buy or deploy such a capability. Any such acquisition plans ultimately hinge on the US Congress’s power of the purse.
The overview said the United States may find it increasingly difficult to use overseas bases to react quickly to perceived threats.
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