- Rocket carrying an experimental Army strike weapon exploded early Monday after taking off from a launch pad in Alaska
- Kodiak photographer Scott Wight watched the launch from Cape Greville in Chiniak
- Weapon able to travel at speeds of up to 3,500mph and strike anywhere on Earth in hours
A
top-secret weapon being developed by the US military was destroyed four
seconds after its launch from a test range in Alaska early on Monday
after controllers detected a problem with the system, the Pentagon said.
The
Advanced Hypersonic Weapon is part of a program to create a missile
that will destroy targets anywhere on Earth within hours - traveling at
speeds in excess of 3,500 miles-an-hour or Mach 5.
The
mission was aborted to ensure public safety, and no one was injured in
the incident, which occurred shortly after 4 am EDT at the Kodiak Launch
Complex in Alaska, said Maureen Schumann, a spokeswoman for the U.S.
Defense Department.
'We had to terminate,' Schumann said. 'The weapon exploded during takeoff and fell back down in the range complex,' she added.
The incident caused an undetermined amount of damage to the launch facility 25 miles from the city of Kodiak, Schumann said.
Detonation: The moment the weapon
exploded is captured by Scott Wight and shows the horizon from Cape
Greville in Chiniak, Alaska
Officials said that the weapon system was not carrying a warhead when it was aborted.
The
rocket carrying the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon was terminated near a
pad of the Kodiak Launch Complex on Kodiak Island shortly after liftoff,
spokeswoman Maureen Schumann said.
After an anomaly was detected, testers made the decision to destroy the rocket to ensure public safety, Schumann said.
"It
came back down on the range complex," she said. "Fortunately, no people
on the ground were injured. There was damage, but I'm not sure of the
extent of it at this time."
The launch complex is about 25 miles from the city of Kodiak.
Witnesses watched the rocket lift off at 12:25 am, quickly head nose-down and explode, KMXT radio reported.
Kodiak
photographer Scott Wight watched the launch from Cape Greville in
Chiniak, about a dozen miles from the launch site. He described the
explosion as quite loud and scary. A fire afterward burned brightly.
The
rocket was the booster for the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, a glide
vehicle designed to quickly reach a target. The design is one of several
being tested by the Army under the umbrella of the Conventional Prompt
Global Strike program, Schumann said.
"It's
a concept that will allow the Department of Defense to engage any
target anywhere in the world in less than an hour," she said.
The
first flight test of the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon on November 17,
2011, flew the weapon from Hawaii to Kwajalein Atoll in the South
Pacific.
The test Monday was designed to enhance previous ground testing, modeling and simulation, Schumann said.
Traveling
at hypersonic speed, the glider also was aimed at Kwajalein and was
supposed to cover the 3,500 miles in less than an hour, Schumann said.
Experimental: Traveling at hypersonic
speed, the glider also was aimed at Kwajalein and was supposed to cover
the 3,500 miles in less than an hour
Experimental: This US Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency artists rendering shows the Falcon Hypersonic
Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2). The US military had to detonate a
hypersonic weapon seconds after lift-off on August 25, 2014 due to a
technical problem, cutting short a flight test for the experimental
project, officials said on Monday
Strike capability: The Falcon HTV-2
will be launched on a rocket into space then will glide back down to
Earth. The 2011 test flight lasted only nine minutes before being
deliberately crashed as a safety measure due to technical difficulties
It
was a setback for the US program, which some analysts see as countering
the growing development of ballistic missiles by Iran and North Korea
but others say is part of an arms race with China, which tested a
hypersonic system in January.
Riki
Ellison, founder of the nonprofit Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance,
said he did not think Monday's failure would lead to the program's
termination. 'This is such an important mission and there is promise in
this technology,' he said.
He said officials aborted the mission after detecting a fault in the computers.
Anthony
Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies think tank, said the technology was best suited
for use against smaller, less-developed countries with missiles.
'The
United States has never assumed that these ... are going to be systems
that you can use against a power like China by themselves,' he said.
'For a country like Iran or North Korea, they could be a very
significant deterrent.'
The rocket carrying the Advanced
Hypersonic Weapon was terminated near a pad of the Kodiak Launch Complex
(pictured) on Kodiak Island shortly after liftoff
James
Acton, a defense analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, said the Pentagon had never been clear about the mission for the
weapon, with some viewing it as an effective tool against terrorists and
others seeing it as a counter to China or Iran and North Korea.
While
hypersonic weapons are unlikely to be fielded for a decade, Acton said
the fact that Washington and Beijing were both testing the weapons
indicated there was a real potential for an arms race.
'I believe the US program is significantly more sophisticated than the Chinese program,' he said.
The weapon, known as the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, was developed by Sandia National Laboratory and the US Army.
Schumann
said it included a glide body mounted on a three-stage,
solid-propellant booster system known as STARS, for Strategic Target
System.
In
a previous test in November 2011, the craft had successfully flown from
Hawaii to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, she said. On
Monday, it was supposed to fly from Alaska to the Kwajalein Atoll.
Acton
said no conclusions could be drawn about the weapon based on Monday's
accident because the launcher detonated before the glide vehicle could
be deployed.
