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Re:America’s Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back and Hypersonic by mulmen on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @03:12PM (#16161925)
The second and essentially all subsequent missiles were rockets though.
Re:America’s Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back and Hypersonic by eesmith on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @04:57PM (#16163097)
Perhaps you are thinking specifically of ICBMs? There are other types of missiles, not all of which are rocket powered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-86_ALCM - "All variants of the AGM-86 missile are powered by a Williams F107 turbofan jet engine"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomahawk_(missile) - "After achieving flight, the missile's wings are unfolded for lift, the airscoop is exposed and the turbofan engine is employed for cruise flight."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpoon_(missile) - "Power plant: Teledyne CAE J402 turbojet, 660 lb (300 kg)-force (2.9 kN) thrust, and a solid-propellant booster for surface and submarine launches"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kh-55 - "It is powered by a single 400 kgf Ukrainian-made, Motor Sich JSC R95-300 turbofan engine, with pop-out wings for cruising efficiency."

The hypersonic missiles use a rocket to get up to speed, like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zircon_(missile) - "A booster stage with solid-fuel engines accelerates it to supersonic speeds, after which a scramjet motor in the second stage accelerates it to hypersonic speeds."

Re:America’s Fastest Spy Plane May Be Back and Hypersonic by Xylakant on Tuesday January 16, 2018 @03:21PM (#16162043)
Yes, since ramjets with performance such as this one were outside our engineering capabilities. As the article states, even this one was not possible a few years ago.

It’s also not entirely true, tomahawk cruise missiles for example use turbofan engines with a solid state booster.