18 hours ago
US to get 2nd Dark Eagle missile battery with Mach 5 speed, 1,700-mile range next year
The United States Army has announced plans to deploy its second 'Dark Eagle' hypersonic missile battery in 2026. This new battery will join the first that is already operational and currently undergoing testing and crew training.
The second battery, according to the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), is scheduled to be fielded in the fourth quarter of 2026. To further this, flight testing of a 'modified missile' is set for late 2025.
Dark Eagle, otherwise known as the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), is a powerful new missile system being developed by the U.S. Army. It's designed to strike high-value enemy platforms extremely fast before they can move, hide, or respond.
The system has a declared range of around 1,725 miles (2,776 km), which is about the distance from London to Athens. The missiles themselves have a speed of over 3,800 mph (6,115 km/h), which is more than five times the speed of sound, making them hypersonic.
Each battery consists of four mobile launchers (Transporter Erector Launchers or TELs), each of which carries two missiles. These are accompanied in turn by a command vehicle called the Battery Operations Center.
The launchers are mounted on mobile trailers, allowing them to move quickly after firing to avoid counterattacks. The first battery was placed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state.
This is currently operated by the 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, and is part of the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force. This force focuses on integrating cyber, space, air, sea, and land capabilities into a single front, particularly in the Indo-Pacific theater.
Payloads are delivered via a ground-launched rocket with a special warhead called a Hypersonic Glide Body (HGB). These weapons, unlike traditional missiles which go up and down in predictable arcs (a bit like a basketball shot), are hypersonic glide bodies.
They work by riding on rocket boosters to the upper atmosphere. Once there, they detach and then glide at hypersonic speeds toward their target. Thereafter, they can maneuver unpredictably, making them very hard to detect, track, or shoot down. They can also fly lower than traditional ballistic missiles, avoiding many radar systems.
This makes the Dark Eagle incredibly difficult to stop and gives almost no warning before impact. To this end, Dark Eagle fills something the U.S. Army calls the 'Goldilocks zone'.
In other words, it is a weapon that hits harder and farther than tactical missiles (such as ATACMS), but is also more flexible than large strategic missiles. It is designed for roles such as destroying air defenses, missile launchers, command centers, logistics bases, and even mobile targets.
It can also operate in A2/AD (Anti-Access/Area Denial) zones where enemies try to keep U.S. forces out. Such missiles also give commanders a first-strike capability, enabling them to strike fast and hard to prevent a larger war from breaking out.
The Dark Eagle serves as a mobile, nearly unstoppable hypersonic weapon system, giving the U.S. Army the ability to strike quickly, deeply, and decisively against enemy forces, even in heavily defended areas. It is seen as the cornerstone of future warfare where speed, precision, and flexibility are critical.
