The United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia will start to collaborate on research into hypersonic weapons, according to multiple reports.
Hypersonic weapons are missiles that travel faster than five times the speed of sound. Due to their speed and the fact that they travel at low altitudes - outside the sight of ground-based radars - and may maneuver in mid-flight, they are more difficult to defend against.
The program will be part of the AUKUS collaboration, which the three countries established last year. It comes after China and Russia developed hypersonic missiles, and Russia allegedly used them in Ukraine the previous month.
Russia claimed to have destroyed a weapons storage in western Ukraine using a hypersonic missile on March 19, and U.S. military information suggests Russian forces have used them several times since then. The attacks would be the first time hypersonic missiles have been used in battle.
Currently, the United Kingdom lacks hypersonic missiles. Although the U.S. and Australia already had a collaborative initiative to develop the weapons, the U.K. government underlined that the new project would be focused on defense. The said missiles have the potential to alter the way future battles are conducted.
As their name implies, they fly at incredible speeds of Mach 5 or more, which is around a mile every second. They are dual-capable, which means they can carry a conventional explosion or a nuclear payload.
They can be launched from the air, the sea, or the ground. These weapons come in two varieties: cruise missiles and glide vehicles.
The cruise missile, of which Russia possesses many, can be launched from an airplane and hit a target more than 1,200 miles. The glide type is launched into space before gliding down to Earth on an uncertain path.
China is currently leading the development of hypersonic missiles, followed by Russia, which has already employed them to kill long-range targets in Ukraine.
The United States is a latecomer to the game, and some of its early testings have failed miserably. North Korea has also stated that it is conducting hypersonic missile tests.
The AUKUS cooperation is a trilateral security pact for the Indo-Pacific region that was announced in September 2021.
The main goal of the agreement is for the U.S. and the U.K. to assist Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.
The agreement also aims to improve cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technology, and other subsea capabilities.
