A few years back, the military came up with the bright idea of swapping out the nuclear warheads on some of America's land- and sea-based ballistic missiles for conventional explosives, transforming city-obliterating rockets into so-called Prompt Global Strike systems capable of taking out terrorist targets anywhere in the world just hours from the word "go."

There was just one problem: The strike-anywhere missile was a nightmare for diplomats and lawmakers. Upon launch, a non-nuclear ballistic missile looks the same as a nuke to other nations' radars. Russia or China, for instance, wouldn't know that America was firing a non-nuclear missile to take out a terrorist camp – as opposed to, say, starting World War III on a whim.

Proposals that the United States install special communications channels to alert nuclear powers in advance of any non-nuclear launch pretty much undermined the whole "prompt" aspect of the weapon.

Now the Air Force thinks it has a solution that makes everyone – Congress, the State Department and the Pentagon – happy. The flying branch wants to ditch the ballistic missile aspect of Prompt Global Strike and replace it with a hypersonic glider air-launched from a heavy bomber, like any of the Air Force's current non-nuclear cruise missiles. That way nobody can mistake the weapon for a nuke.

Even though the prototype crashed during its first test flight last year, the Air Force is eying the Mach-20 Falcon Hypersonic Test Vehicle as the basis for the new strike missile.

"Our focus is on boost-glide capabilities, including the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle concept," Maj. Gen. David Scott said this week. "We have no plans for conventionally armed sea-based missiles such as a [Navy] Conventional Trident modification or conventionally-armed ICBMs."

The gliding missile has the extra advantage of fitting seamlessly into existing operations. The Pentagon hasn't used non-nuclear ballistic missiles in many decades, but cruise-missile launches are routine. The only difference between an armed hypersonic glider and the Air Force's existing Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile would be range: A B-52 carrying armed gliders could fire the missiles thousands of miles from their targets and still take them out in just minutes' time.

As a modest proof-of-concept, the Air Force successfully test-launched its much smaller and less speedy X-51 hypersonic cruise missile, pictured, from a B-52 in May last year. For its part, the doomed HTV test in April, was not the complete wash it appeared to be at the time. In November, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced it had figured out what downed the glider – a flight-control "wobble" – and had prepared fixes for the next HTV test, slated for this summer.

The re-imagined Prompt Global Strike missile will complement the Air Force's planned new stealth bomber, though it's not clear the new bomber will actually carry the missile. Instead, the missile and the bomber will form what the Air Force describes as a "family of systems," meant to preserve U.S. strike capability not only against terrorist targets, but also against well-defended potential enemies, such as China.

*Photo: Air Force

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