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    US and Australia finish a key round of hypersonic missile tests

    by 
    Jon Fingas
    Jon Fingas
    07.17.2017

    The US and its allies are determined to be first out of the gate with hypersonic weapons, and they've just taken a big stride forward in that regard... not that they're saying much about it. Both the US and Australia have confirmed that they recently completed a series of mysterious hypersonic missile tests. All the countries will say is that the flights were successful, and that they represented "significant milestones" in testing everything from the design assembly to the control mechanisms. They won't even say which vehicles were used or how quickly they traveled, although past tests have usually relied on Terrier Orion rockets (above) and have reached speeds as high as Mach 8.