The Department of War has set its sights on hypersonic weapons, vehicles that maneuver through the atmosphere at Mach 5 and beyond. The very speed of these weapons, their desirable property, raises new challenges for their use. Hypersonics move the friction of the battlefield upstream into the design, manufacturing, and test ecosystems, where failures can be expensive and hard to diagnose.
The allure of these systems is “decision-centric.” The idea, borrowed from John Boyd, is to get inside an opponent’s decision cycle, his "OODA loop," and force a state of perpetual disorientation. The wager is that speed plus maneuverability can deliver a kind of supremacy that feels, to those in the Pentagon, like control over time itself.
The history of this pursuit is a recurring military revolution of time compression. In 1968, the rocket-powered X-15 made its final flight, an engineering path the U.S. partially explored and then left dormant for decades. Now, the Department of War frames its latest tests as a return to that aerospace mastery.
To bridge this gap, the military has begun to borrow the jargon of Silicon Valley.
The context is different this time, and the pressure of the moment is no longer speculative. Russia has claimed the combat use of its Kinzhal and Zircon missiles in Ukraine. China, according to the Department of War’s 2025 reports, possesses the world’s “leading hypersonic missile arsenal.” These events convert the technology from a next-gen category into an “enacted reality,” a spectacle of intimidation that shapes budgets and public mythologies.
The American effort is split between two architectures: the boost-glide vehicle, which maneuvers through the upper atmosphere after being launched by a rocket, and the hypersonic cruise missile, an air-breathing vehicle powered by a scramjet. The scramjet is a particularly demanding piece of engineering, requiring supersonic combustion to occur in extremely short “residence times” at extreme temperatures. These systems make the operational promise that they can fly in the upper atmosphere, between 80,000 and 200,000 feet, effectively exploiting the altitude bands where existing sensors and interceptors struggle to maintain continuous observation.
The department’s own vocabulary reveals a more earthbound struggle. Officials describe a portfolio that is a grinding capacity contest involving aero-aerothermal science, high-temperature materials, and supply-chain fragility. The Government Accountability Office notes that the limited experience in producing these weapons makes cost prediction and schedule control unusually difficult.
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Photo by Daniel Torok/White House via Getty Images
The fiscal year 2026 research funding request for hypersonics was $3.9 billion, a sharp drop from the $6.9 billion requested in FY2025. As of early 2026, the department has not yet established stable “programs of record” for these weapons, implying that the mission requirements and long-term funding remain unresolved.
To bridge this gap, the military has begun to borrow the jargon of Silicon Valley. It speaks of delivering a “minimum viable product.” It aims to develop capability at the “speed of relevance,” a phrase that imports the tempo of commercial tech into the military imagination. The warfighter is reimagined as a “user” whose feedback shapes “capability increments.”
The constraints on this vision are mundane. The GAO identifies aged facilities and “insufficient sustainment” as major risks for test capacity. There are long lead times for specialized carbon-carbon materials and limited suppliers for thermal protection. To enhance the workforce, the department is spending $100 million to run a university consortium to cultivate a community of labs and curricula.
The speed of these weapons affects the attacker as well as defender. When decision time shrinks, the temptation to automate launch decisions grows. Arms control analysts warn of “flash” dynamics driven by machine interpretation and rapid escalation pathways. This concern became concrete on February 5, 2026, when the New START treaty expired. For the first time in decades, the United States and Russia have no binding bilateral framework for strategic predictability. In this vacuum, strategic stability is a contested design space in which weapons, sensors, and machine-speed doctrines interact.
Iran is attempting to choose a new supreme leader, while the U.S. and Israel continue strikes, including on Tehran and Lebanon.
The post **Livewire** Operation Epic Fury Day Five: The Latest News From Iran and the Middle East appeared first on Breitbart.
Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is being tipped to rise up and assume leadership of the country despite the fact he’s never been elected or appointed to a government role.
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The NBA has described a strip club as an "iconic cultural institution."
Along with musical performances, a podcast, and chicken wings, the Atlanta Hawks have announced a "Magic City Monday" on March 16 against the Orlando Magic.
'Allowing this night to go forward without protest would reflect poorly on us as an NBA community.'
In the official announcement, promoted by the NBA itself, the league declined to note that Magic City — the establishment being celebrated — is actually a strip club, nor did it even describe it in a tamer fashion, like an exotic dancing club, for example.
Instead, the venue was celebrated as having a "pivotal role in hip-hop and Black culture."
"This collaboration and theme night is very meaningful to me after all the work that we did to put together 'Magic City: An American Fantasy,'" said Jami Gertz, principal owner of the Hawks. "The iconic Atlanta institution has made such an incredible impact on our city and its unique culture."
Melissa Proctor, Hawks executive vice president, avoided stating the true nature of the club also, instead mentioning "the food ... the music and the exclusive merchandise."
The bizarre promotion drew reaction from San Antonio Spurs center Luke Kornet, who pointed to the obvious omission of Magic City being "Atlanta's premier strip club."
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In a written post to his page on Medium earlier this week, Kornet — a devout Catholic, according to the New York Times — asked the NBA to cancel the promotion and to respect and protect women instead.
"The NBA should desire to protect and esteem women, many of whom work diligently every day to make this the best basketball league in the world. We should promote an atmosphere that is protective and respectful of the daughters, wives, sisters, mothers, and partners that we know and love."
The 30-year-old went on: "Allowing this night to go forward without protest would reflect poorly on us as an NBA community, specifically in being complicit in the potential objectification and mistreatment of women in our society."
Along with stating that he and other players were surprised by the themed night, Kornet said the league should hold a "higher standard" for what it promotes.
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Photo By Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
"The celebration of a strip club is not conduct aligned" with what the NBA purports to be, Kornet added.
Sharing Kornet's sentiment was Golden State Warriors veteran Al Horford.
"Well said Luke," Horford wrote on X, sharing a copy of Kornet's statements. Horford played for the Hawks from 2007 to 2016.
Despite the brazen celebration of the club, this appears to be the only instance that the NBA or one of its teams has promoted a business of this nature.
The Hawks and NBA did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
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On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) responded to a question on ending the DHS shutdown in the wake of strikes on Iran by stating that “I see protecting the homeland as also protecting the vulnerable
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One of the greatest forces for good the world has ever known. And that is why the left hate her. The hatred of the good for being the good. The secret nuclear facility—previously unknown to Western intelligence—was struck in the opening hours of the campaign and completely destroyed: Israeli Air Force jets on Tuesday destroyed a...