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WASHINGTON - Building hypersonic weapons in 2020 is a bit like building computers in the 1950s. One day, it will be its own specific field — but today it requires finding and convening experts from multiple discrete disciplines. Defense Department leaders hope they can accelerate this process by funding a new academic consortium led by Texas A&M University. The contract award is $20 million annually for five years.

China has already begun to establish multidisciplinary university programs that bring together students in, say, materials development or aerodynamics to design and test new hypersonics designs.

The field is so new that it needs experts from many fields to learn to work together.

The new consortium will give students experience not just in building parts of hypersonic craft but the whole thing, giving them experience beyond just their disciplines.

Established in April with $100 million in 2020 funding, her office has set six research priorities: materials; guidance, navigation and control; propulsion (airwing); environment (what is the vehicle experiencing); applied aerodynamics and systems engineering; and lethality and energetics (the warheads, etc.). The office hopes to announce 26 project solicitations in coming weeks, mostly to advance understanding of these priorities as applied to hypersonics.