A hypersonic weapon being developed by the U.S. military was destroyed just a few seconds after its launch from a test range on Aug. 25 after controllers detected a problem with the system.
The hypersonic weapon is part of a program to design a missile capable of destroying targets anywhere on Earth within an hour of receiving permission to launch and getting data, the Pentagon said to Reuters this week.
The mission was aborted to make sure no one was injured. The incident took place shortly after 4 a.m. EDT at the Kodiak Launch Complex in Alaska, said Maureen Schumann, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Defense Department.
"We had to terminate," Schumann said, according to Reuters. "The weapon exploded during takeoff and fell back down in the range complex."
Though no one was injured, the incident caused an "undetermined amount of damage" to the launch facility, Schumann added.
The incident is a major setback for the U.S. program, which some experts see as countering the growing development of ballistic missiles by North Korea and Iran, but others say it is part of an arms race with China, which tested a hypersonic system back in January.
Riki Ellison, founder of the nonprofit Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, believes that Monday's failure shouldn't lead to the program's termination.
"This is such an important mission and there is promise in this technology," he added, according to Reuters.
He added officials aborted the mission after finding a fault in the computers.
Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said the technology was best suited for use against smaller, less-developed countries with missiles.
"The United States has never assumed that these are going to be systems that you can use against a power like China by themselves," he said, according to Reuters. "For a country like Iran or North Korea, they could be a very significant deterrent."
James Acton, a defense analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the Pentagon hasn't been clear about the mission. Some view it as an effective tool against terrorists, while others see it as a counter to China or Iran and North Korea.
"I believe the U.S. program is significantly more sophisticated than the Chinese program," he said.
The weapon, known as the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, was developed by Sandia National Laboratory and the U.S. Army, according to Reuters.
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