Hypersonic Weapons Are Coming. The Pentagon Needs To Spend More On Defending Against Them.
Loren Thompson
In the year since Russian President Vladimir Putin declared to the world that his nation had successfully tested a hypersonic weapon, funding for similar weapons in the U.S. has greatly increased. The Pentagon now plans to spend an average of over $2 billion per year through 2024 on developing hypersonic systems for the Air Force, Army and Navy.
Hypersonic weapons typically move at over five times the speed of sound, meaning faster than a mile per second. But it isn’t just sheer speed that makes them different from existing weapons. Unlike long-range ballistic missile warheads that can approach 25 times the speed of sound as they reenter the atmosphere, emerging hypersonic weapons can glide and maneuver.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2019/04/05/hypersonic-weapons-are-coming-the-pentagon-needs-to-spend-more-on-defending-against-them/#d09bba178257
