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Blast33 -> RE: Naval and Defence News (10/22/2020 7:54:22 AM)
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All Of The Navy's Arleigh Burke Destroyers Will Get Hypersonic Missiles Top Official Says
President Donald Trump's National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien, has said that that the present plan is to integrate hypersonic missiles onto every one of the U.S. Navy's Arleigh Burke class destroyers, dozens of which are in service now, with even more under construction. Depending on the exact kind of hypersonic weapon those ships might receive, this could be an extremely costly and time-consuming undertaking.
"The Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike program will provide hypersonic missile capability to hold targets at risk from longer ranges," O’Brien said in his prepared remarks, according to Defense News. “This capability will be deployed first on our newer Virginia class submarines and the Zumwalt class destroyers. Eventually, all three flights of the Arleigh Burke class destroyers will field this capability."
The still-in-development Conventional Prompt Strike hypersonic missile is the Navy's portion of a shared development effort with the U.S. Army. This weapon uses a ballistic missile-like rocket booster to loft an unpowered hypersonic boost-glide vehicle, known as the Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB), to an optimal altitude and speed. After reaching that point, the C-HGB glides down to its target at hypersonic speeds, defined as anything above Mach 5, within the atmosphere.
The "strike length" cells in the Arleigh Burke's Mk 41 VLS arrays are designed to accommodate missiles around 20 feet long at most, as well. While the exact length of the Conventional Prompt Strike missile is unknown, the Army says the weapon will fit inside a container that is roughly the same length as an M870 flatbed trailer, which is 40 feet long.
This is why the Block V Virginia class submarines will be first to get these missiles, because these boats will feature a new Virginia Payload Module (VPM) with four very large launch tubes. The Navy also notably used an Ohio class ballistic missile submarine, which has tubes able to hold the nuclear-armed Trident D5 submarine-launched ballistic missile, a weapon around 44 feet long, to conduct the first publicly acknowledged at-sea test of a Conventional Prompt Strike missile in 2017.
And more on:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/37182/all-of-the-navys-arleigh-burke-destroyers-will-get-hypersonic-missiles-top-official-says
[image]local://upfiles/61749/CA6E3DCD6115487A8EBE99CDDD67A746.jpg[/image]
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