U.S. Hypersonic Missile Test Marred by In-Flight Data Loss
- Weapon meant to compete with Chinese, Russian missile programs
- Telemetry flaw was not disclosed in Air Force press release
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The second test flight of Lockheed Martin Corp.’s hypersonic missile prototype was marred by the weapon’s failure to transmit in-flight performance data, two people familiar with the results said, a setback for US efforts to catch up with China and Russia in a key weapons capability.
The transmission failure and loss of data in the March 13 exercise wasn’t reported in a statement issued by the US Air Force on March 24 that said the test “met several of the objectives and team engineers and testers are collecting data for further analysis.”