“The new program, dubbed Falcon, for ‘Force Application and Launch from CONUS,’ centers on a small-launch-vehicle concept of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,” veteran intelligence reporter Walter Pincus reveals in today’s paper. “The agency describes Falcon as a ‘a reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV) capable of delivering 12,000 pounds of payload at a distance of 9,000 nautical miles from [the continental United States] in less than two hours.'”
Source: Washington Post via Raw Story.
Countermeasures: space based radar systems.