For the first time, France tested its home-grown hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), a type of warhead for ballistic missiles that can manoeuvre freely and glide at hypersonic speed.

The Direction générale de l'Armement (DGA), the nation's defense procurement agency, reported that the French glider, V-Max, was launched on Monday from a sounding rocket, which enables exact measurements, from the Biscarosse missile test site on the Bay of Biscay, southwest France.

"Its flight test, on a very demanding long-range trajectory, represented an unprecedented technical challenge that will pave the way for the future of our national hypervelocity roadmap," the agency said in a statement.

“Equipped with many on-board technological innovations, this flight test was an unprecedented technical challenge that prepares the future of our national hypervelocity roadmap,” the DGA commented the day after the test. “France is one of the only countries in the world to have credible expertise in this field.” 

VMaX stands for Véhicule Manoeuvrant Expérimental or experimental maneuvering vehicle.

The French HGV has the capacity to exceed Mach 5, or 6,000 kilometers per hour (3,730 mph).

Major nuclear countries have been researching hypersonic gliders—unpowered, manoeuvrable aircraft traveling at speeds greater than Mach 5 (6,000 km/h)—for a number of years.

Usually, a rocket is used to launch the glider to a height of several tens of kilometers above the earth, after which the glider and its payload plummet back to earth at an extremely fast rate.

Nuclear or conventional warheads could be carried by hypersonic gliders. Hypersonic gliders have the ability to change course quickly, in contrast to ballistic missiles, whose trajectories are predetermined upon launch.

 In 2019, France contracted the aerospace company Ariane Group to manage the VMAX (Véhicule Manoeuvrant Expérimental – Experimental Maneuvering Vehicle) program, aimed at developing a demonstrator of this technology.

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