By Gordon Lubold
The Christian Science Monitor

Washington - In the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other individuals the military considers high-value targets, the US Air Force is pursuing a new program that could put a missile on a target in minutes instead of hours.

The Air Force is developing a “hypersonic” engine designed to fly bombs at Mach 6.5 speed, or more than 4,000 miles per hour, allowing commanders a chance to conduct long-range strikes on targets in a fraction of the time it takes now. The program, known as the X-51A scramjet, could be a valuable tool as a “manhunter” in fights such as those in Afghanistan or Iraq - or as a deterrent against more conventional enemies in industrialized nations, officials say. It all comes down to speed, and that could change the nature of the fight in the war on terrorism, military officials say.

“Faster is always better in air power,” says Brig. Gen. Jim Poss, the Air Force’s director of intelligence for its Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va. “What we’ve found from combat experience is that people realize very quickly you have to move to survive on the modern battlefield. And the best way to counter that is to get there with the appropriate weapon in the appropriate size very quickly.”

The program isn’t a weapons program per se, but a demonstration of an engine that can move a weapon really, really fast. Unlike a rocket, which requires its own oxygen stored in heavy tanks, a scramjet engine mixes the oxygen already in the air with fuel at such a high rate that it can propel itself faster than anything else that can fly long distances within the atmosphere. Strap on a warhead, and the United States has a unique new weapon, analysts and military officials say.

It sounds ideal from a military commander’s standpoint. There’s just one problem: The X-51A doesn’t quite exist just yet.

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