The Air Force has entered a multinational research partnership with the Australian Defense Department to pursue hypersonic technology development. The $54 million cooperative program—called Hypersonic International flight Research Experimentation, or HiFIRE, covers six years of basic and applied research shepherded by the Air Force Research Lab and the Australian Defense Science and Technology Organization. HiFIRE will include up to 10 flight experiments. AFRL program manager Douglas Dolvin says there is potential to develop in the near term air-breathing hypersonic cruise missiles that could “deliver prompt, precision strike of time critical targets from safe, standoff distances.” For the far term, he believes such air-breathing hypersonic vehicles “may enable operationally responsive space access.”
Pentagon officials overseeing homeland counter-drone strategy told lawmakers that even with preliminary moves to bolster U.S. base defenses, the military still lacks the capability to comprehensively identify, track, and engage hostile drones like those that breached the airspace of Langley Air Force Base in Virginia for 17 days in December…