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US announces successful hypersonic missile test

Washington, Jul 13 (EFE).- The United States has carried out a successful test of a hypersonic missile, authorities reported Wednesday.

The tests come amid growing concerns Russia and China are further advanced in this technology.

The federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said it had “successfully executed its first flight test at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.”

“The OpFires system achieved all test objectives, including first ever use of a U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) logistics truck as a medium-range missile launcher, missile canister egress, stable flight capture, and use of U.S. Army inventory artillery fire control systems to initiate the test mission,” it said in a statement.

The test was conducted and the system made by US government contractor Lockheed Martin, and included a Northrup Grumman rocket motor.

On Tuesday, the Air Force successfully launched a hypersonic weapon – the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) – off the coast of California.

They come after a test of another type of hypersonic weapon, the Common Hypersonic Glide Body, failed on June 29 in Hawaii.

The US is putting its efforts into developing these weapons after Russia and China successfully carried out tests with this type of technology, coveted because the speed makes this type of weapon difficult to detect by anti-missile systems.

In the defense budget for fiscal year 2023, which begins in October, the administration of President Joe Biden has requested $7.2 billion for long-range weapons, including hypersonic missiles.

In May, Russia said it fired high-precision Kinzhal, or Dagger, hypersonic missiles into Ukraine with a range of more than 2,000 kilometers and a speed 10 times greater than that of sound for the first time. EFE

arc/tw

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