The US Navy and the US Army conducted three tests of prototypes of components from its hypersonic weapons programs. The Pentagon described the tests as successful.
The tests “demonstrated advanced hypersonic technologies, capabilities and prototypes of systems in a realistic operating environment,” the US Department of Defense said.
But the Pentagon statement said the booster stack test suffered a failure. The component is the rocket meant for accelerating the projectile to hypersonic speeds. The hypersonic glide body could not proceed, the statement said.
The Pentagon could not test the hypersonic glide body, the key component needed to develop a hypersonic weapon.
The tests happened on the same day that US President Joe Biden expressed concern about Chinese hypersonic weapons.