U.S. and Japan Cooperate to Intercept Hypersonic Missiles

1 min read

U.S. and Japan Cooperate to Intercept Hypersonic Missiles — RTX artist rendering for GPI

U.S. Department of Defence stated that Japan and the U.S. will start to work on a hypersonic missile interceptor project.

Pentagon and Japan Defence Ministry decided to initiate a Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) Cooperative Development program within the 2023 U.S.-Japan bilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation Projects (RDT&E).
The U.S. has already started to work on intercepting hypersonic missiles at the glide phase, which reaches more than 10 Mach. The Missile Defence Agency (MDA) 2022 awarded initial contracts to two U.S. companies, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, to develop “high fidelity models” of GPI. The new MoU indicates that Japan will contribute to these efforts.
The interceptor will be developed to counter hostile countries’ offensive hypersonic and sophisticated missile capabilities.