The arms race is picking up considerable speed, and the United States doesn't want to get left behind.
Over the past four months, the U.S. Air Force has awarded two contracts for hypersonic weapons worth a maximum of $1.4 billion to aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.
The first contract, announced in April, awards $928 million to develop something called the Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW). And last week, the Air Force disclosed another deal, worth up to $480 million, to begin designing the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW). [The Most Dangerous Space Weapons Ever]
"We are going to go fast and leverage the best technology available to get hypersonic capability to the war fighter as soon as possible," Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson said in a statement last week.
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