HYPERSONIC MISSILES ARE THE FUTURE OF WARFARE, SO WHY DOESN’T THE US HAVE ANY?
July 14, 2023Maggie BenZvi
Not many decades ago, the United States developed the atom bomb and emerged as the world’s foremost innovator of military weaponry. That is no longer the case, as protracted counterinsurgencies in Afghanistan and the Middle East have stunted the growth of America’s arsenal and left it lagging behind those of its near-peer adversaries. Perhaps the most glaring technological disparity is in the development of hypersonic missiles.
As of several years ago, Russia and China both possess hypersonic missiles. At the time of this writing, the US has none. Now, as the Global War on Terror is finally drawing to a close, the Pentagon is devoting huge amounts of money and manpower to catch up — and for good reason. Hypersonic missiles are vastly superior to all other long-range rockets. They are also, at least in theory, unstoppable by any defense systems that currently exist.
In fact, according to a Congressional Research Service in Focus report issued in May 2023, “U.S. defense officials have stated that both existing terrestrial- and space-based sensor architectures are insufficient to detect and track hypersonic weapons.”
For the American weapons engineers spearheading the hypersonic program, the challenge at hand is two-pronged. First, they must figure out how to make a missile that moves too fast and too unpredictably to be stopped by highly sophisticated air-defense systems. And then, what if, say, China or Russia solves that puzzle first? How do you counter a missile that can’t be stopped?
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