Popular Mechanics The “vintage racer” weapon system flew under the public’s radar for a long time.
BY - A seemingly ordinary photo on Flickr revealed the existence of a previously unknown weapon system, Vintage Racer.
- Although unclassified, development of the weapon has gone on in relative obscurity.
- The weapon is designed to use hypersonic speed to “prosecute targets of interest”.
A new, obscure hypersonic weapon system was revealed to the world this weekend—on Twitter. A Powerpoint slide describing the “Vintage Racer” weapon was caught in a photo of the Secretary of the Army at the 2019 Association of the U.S. Army convention. The slide describes Vintage Racer as a hypersonic weapon meant to deliver loitering munitions to a target area, where they would seek out and destroy enemy forces.
The errant slide was caught by Stephen Trimble, Defense Editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology. Trimble announced his findings on Twitter.
Here’s a closeup of the actual slide:
Trimble later tweeted that he had found references to Vintage Racer in a Department of Defense fiscal year 2021 budget estimate. The budget estimate states that Vintage Racer flew in a successful 2019 flight test and was being transferred to the U.S. Army for further development, likely into an operational weapon.
Vintage Racer does not appear to be a classified program, just very, very under publicized. There is no mention of the program anywhere online except in the Department of Defense fiscal year 2019 budget estimate. The document describes the new weapon as:
Vintage Racer matured an advanced capability to prosecute targets of interest. This project validated the aerodynamic design with wind tunnel testing. Vintage Racer also developed and integrated a guidance subsystem for targeted kinetic effects.
Hypersonic weapon systems are vehicles that travel at hypersonic speeds, at Mach 5 or faster. The Army is known to be funding the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), being developed by Lockheed Martin and slated to fly in 2023.
Vintage Racer is the U.S. Army’s second, lesser known hypersonic weapon. The presence of General Atomics personnel in the photo means the company is playing at least some role in the development. Interestingly, Vintage Racer flew four years before LHRW is scheduled to fly.
Vintage Racer, if it reaches operational status, will probably be used to destroy important, mobile, time-sensitive targets. For example, a battery of the missiles could be based in South Korea. In the event of war, the missiles could deploy their payloads over a North Korean ballistic missile base dug into the side of a mountain. Vintage Racer’s loitering munitions could fly lazy circles over the base’s tunnel entrances, patiently waiting to attack any launch vehicles that emerge. The weapon could be used to attack enemy headquarters and other high value targets. Hypersonic speeds would ensure a fast response time and make the weapon difficult to shoot down.
The fact that Vintage Racer has cruised along all these years without notice is startling and reflects the sheer size of the Pentagon’s weapons program. Are there other weapon systems out there like Vintage Racer? Almost definitely.
Source: Stephen Trimble/Twitter.
