There is only one use for a hypersonic missile and that is as a first strike nuclear warhead. The USA hasn't made this a priority in it's arsenil because the USA is most interested in peace. Why pour money into a program that is intended to never result in a military victory?
Nuclear warfair is about mass death and loss of land to radiation. That is not a victory. There is no viable use for these weapons and they remain mostly a myth, but, in fact the USA and NATO know the capacity of these horrible missiles and their destructive capacity.
Russia's willingness to show off it's hypersonic missiles is about SALES to other countries that fear being destroyed by the USA, such as North Korea, Iran and Syria. The USA is not interested in sales of munitions that have a one time use and bring human survival to the brink of extinction.
Russia also needs to appear to be superior to NATO alliance capacity to wage war. NATO isn't interested in war because it uses a country's assets wrongly. Putin is now a wild card and why the NATO alliance along with it's Pacific friends will focus on munitions that kill. It is a paradigm that will be revisited to insure The West is stronger than anything adversaries can throw at it. Unfortunately.
By Kyle Mizokami
The United States and Australia (click here) conducted a joint missile test earlier this month of a hypersonic missile capable of traveling faster than six thousand miles an hour. The test of the HiFiRE vehicle paves the way for a new generation of hypersonic weapons that can strike enemies with a minimum of reaction time.
The test, first reported by Flightglobal, was conducted jointly by Australia's Defence Science and Technology Group and the U.S. Air Force Research Lab at the Woomera Test Range in Australia. According to the site, the tests involved the HiFiRE scramjet vehicle. Here's a very short video of the launch:
Australia's News.com later linked the test to an unexplained fireball that was seen that night over much of the southern Australian outback.
The HiFiRE program has been ongoing since 2009, when the first test involving the scramjet engine took place. Previous tests have involved HiFiRE being lofted upward on an Orion sounding rocket with an S-30 rocket as a first stage....
