The US Army has completed a live-fire test of a hypersonic warhead using a cannon-based launch system at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona. The test used the Heavy Artillery Test System, a modification of the canceled Strategic Long Range Cannon program. This approach could provide a cheaper and faster way to evaluate the terminal performance of future hypersonic weapons.
The test marks the first successful live-fire demonstration of a full-scale hypersonic warhead launched from a cannon-based test system. The concept has been under development for roughly two years as a way to create a high-throughput, alternative method for assessing terminal effects at velocity and scale.
The Army believes the capability could significantly increase the pace of hypersonic weapons development, allowing engineers to use cannon-launched surrogates to generate impact data earlier and more frequently during development.
