UPDATED: DARPA Asked Marines to Consider Adding Land-Based Hypersonic Weapons to Arsenal, But...

The Pentagon’s research and development community reached out to the Marine Corps over how a land-based hypersonic weapon could be incorporated into the smallest service’s quick-maneuver concept.
Mike White, assistant director for hypersonics in the Office of the Under Secretary for Defense for Research and Engineering, said today that “I haven’t given up on the Marines yet” for incorporating hypersonic weapons into their future operational concepts.
“The Army and the Navy and the Air Force are moving out aggressively with hypersonic systems, but we are also talking to the Marines about possible applications of ground-launched hypersonic capabilities,” he said during the Defense One Tech Summit held online this week.
Hypersonic weapons travel at speeds of at least Mach 5 – five times the speed of sound – and challenge enemy defense systems not only in tracking their path but in being able to hit and defeat them.