The Air Force has entered a multinational research partnership with the Australian Defense Department to pursue hypersonic technology development. The $54 million cooperative program—called Hypersonic International flight Research Experimentation, or HiFIRE, covers six years of basic and applied research shepherded by the Air Force Research Lab and the Australian Defense Science and Technology Organization. HiFIRE will include up to 10 flight experiments. AFRL program manager Douglas Dolvin says there is potential to develop in the near term air-breathing hypersonic cruise missiles that could “deliver prompt, precision strike of time critical targets from safe, standoff distances.” For the far term, he believes such air-breathing hypersonic vehicles “may enable operationally responsive space access.”
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.