The US of A Has Successfully Tested Hypersonic Missiles That Cruise At 5x The Speed of Sound

(SOURCE)

The US Air Force’s top hypersonic weapon completed the second consecutive successful test of its booster motor in less than two months, the service said, a turnround after three failures.

The weapon built by Lockheed Martin Corp. “reached hypersonic speeds” and  “primary and secondary objectives were met” in the test on Tuesday off a B-52 bomber, Brigadier General Heath Collins, the program manager, said in a statement Wednesday. “We have now completed our booster test series and are ready to move forward to all-up-round testing later this year.”

In the most meathead way possible, this is bad ass. For whatever reason I think it's pretty wild (is that the correct word?) that over the last 100 or so years we've gone from using cavalries and single bolt rifles in warfare to missiles that are launched into orbit at 15,000+ miles per hour at the click of a button. Innovation is technological advancement always piques my interest, scary as it may be. 

Then when I come to my senses and realize that we're doing this because we're about to be (already are?) in a giant standoff with two world powers when it comes to military might. Hopefully Ukraine wins their war against Russia, Russia realizes the Soviet Union is dead and they can't just take it back, and Russia goes back to doing Russia things like making vodka and smoking hot IG models like Olya here:

Yup, that'll do Russia. That'll do. 

Unfortunately I couldn't find any videos of this exact missile test launch, but apparently we (the US of A) have been spinning the wheels on loading up on hypersonic missiles since 9/11 and we really ramped up our research into producing these weapons over the last few years with both Russia and China successfully testing hypersonic missiles. North Korea too.

And Russia has apparently already used these weapons in their invasion of Ukraine already.

For a quick 7 minute rundown on both the how and why we're doing this, check out this video:

Wild technology, yes. Scary technology, also yes. I think I speak for everyone when I say I don't want to live in a world where we're in constant fear of nuclear threats or making them ourselves. I don't personally remember the fall of the Soviet Union or the Cold War as I was born in late 1988, but I gotta imagine the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early '60s and the aftermath of it was a pretty stressful time for… the entire world. Just two world powers aiming nukes at each other, daring the other side to blink first. Thank god that movie "Fail Safe" wasn't based on true events.

Not fun. The tech part is cool though, I guess.