The US can be destroyed in one hour because it cannot defend itself against Chinese and Russian hypersonic attacks with nuclear weapons: --- Superfast weapons can evade most air defenses.

 

 Now the US is the main hope for Lithuania's security. The Lithuanian military leadership must understand the real situation. Nuclear parity is over.

"The weapon Beijing launched over the South China Sea traveled at speeds of more than 15,000 miles an hour as it circled the globe. Flying at least 20 times the speed of sound, it could reach anywhere on earth in less than an hour.

The summer 2021 test flight ended with the missile striking near a target in China, but it sent shock waves through Washington. National security officials concluded Beijing had launched a hypersonic weapon -- a projectile capable of traveling at least five times the speed of sound.

The weapons can attack with extreme speed, be launched from great distances and evade most air defenses. They can carry conventional explosives or nuclear warheads. China and Russia have them ready to use. The U.S. doesn't.

For more than 60 years, the U.S. has invested billions of dollars in dozens of programs to develop its own version of the technology. Those efforts have either ended in failure or been canceled before having a chance to succeed.

Washington, having spent recent decades focusing on fights with terrorists and insurgencies, is once again pouring resources into hypersonics. The Pentagon's 2023 budget includes more than $5 billion for the weapons. The U.S. is also tapping the private sector -- including Silicon Valley venture capitalists -- to help develop them to a degree rarely attempted in the past.

The spending is part of America's struggle to re-establish dominance in key military technologies as it enters a new era of great-power competition. The U.S. is straining to keep up with China in military technologies ranging from artificial intelligence to biotechnology.

Moscow's work on hypersonics is also a concern for the Pentagon, even if Russia's weapons are mostly based on Cold War research and not as sophisticated as those China is now developing. 

Moscow has developed weapons that can threaten NATO forces in Europe, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has touted Avangard, a hypersonic weapon that can reach the U.S.

The Pentagon's problems with developing hypersonics run up and down the decision chain, from failed flight tests and inadequate testing infrastructure to the lack of a clear, overarching plan for fielding the weapons. "My concern about the lack of progress on hypersonics is only increasing," said John Hyten, who was vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Chinese test flight. Now retired, Hyten said: "We need to move faster in multiple directions."

Hypersonics, in the hands of powers such as China or Russia, have the potential to alter the strategic balance that has long undergirded U.S. defense policy. While the U.S. military may still be the most powerful in the world, hypersonic missiles could help an adversary challenge that superiority by evading U.S. early warning systems designed to detect attacks on North America, or striking U.S. naval assets, including aircraft carriers, as well as key bases abroad.

Even the most advanced U.S. warship in the South China Sea could be defenseless against a hypersonic attack.

Ballistic missiles can travel at hypersonic speeds, but they follow a predictable flight path, making them easier to intercept before hitting a target. Cruise missiles, like the U.S. Tomahawk, can maneuver, but most travel more slowly, under the speed of sound.

Hypersonic missiles combine speed with the ability to fly at low altitude and maneuver in flight, making them more difficult to spot by radar or satellite. That makes them almost impossible to intercept with current systems.

In a battle in the South China Sea, Beijing could use hypersonics to more than double its reach, leaving U.S. ships in the region nearly defenseless, and even strike Guam, home to thousands of U.S. troops and key military installations.

The U.S. has begun investing in missile defense systems that are designed to take out hypersonic missiles, including a new effort that will be developed jointly with Japan. Such systems aren't expected to enter service for at least 10 years.

Over the past decade, China has conducted hundreds of flight tests of this new generation of weapons. Beijing already has hypersonic weapons ready to deploy in its arsenal, as does Moscow, which has used them against Ukraine.

Pentagon and intelligence officials haven't released estimates of how many they think China and Russia have. The U.S., which has conducted just a fraction of the number of China's flight tests, has yet to deploy any actual hypersonic missiles.

American engineers were for years at the forefront of research on hypersonics, working on missiles and aircraft.

Research in the field dates back to the late 1950s, when the U.S. military flew the X-15, a manned hypersonic test aircraft. The program, though successful, was canceled in 1968 as the U.S. got involved in the Vietnam War. Hypersonic aircraft didn't seem relevant to fighting insurgents in the jungle.

No country today flies a manned hypersonic aircraft. U.S. and other militaries operate supersonic jets, meaning they can fly greater than the speed of sound, or Mach 1, but none can reach Mach 5.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Washington funded technologies such as armed drones, bomb detection and sensors that could track terrorists and insurgents.

China, meanwhile, accelerated its efforts to develop hypersonic weapons with frequent flight tests, and Russia, which had long invested in the field, also moved ahead. Beijing often used American research on hypersonics -- published openly in scientific journals -- that the U.S. government funded for decades.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said the U.S. had preceded Beijing in hypersonics work and accused Washington of spreading hypersonic technology. "We will never be engaged in an arms race with any country," he said.

Russia, which also followed American developments closely, restarted work on hypersonics it pursued during the Cold War.

"We basically trained the world in hypersonics," said Richard Hallion, an aerospace analyst who has followed hypersonics closely for more than 50 years.

In 2016, a high-level panel of the National Academies, an independent scientific group that provides advice to the federal government, warned that foreign adversaries, including China, were readying a new generation of hypersonic weapons. While the details of the study are classified, its conclusions set off alarm bells inside the Defense Department.

Concerned by the growing threat, the Pentagon ramped up testing and development. The Army, Navy and Air Force are developing hypersonic weapons, sometimes in cooperation, as is the Pentagon's research agency Darpa. "We are in a race," said Mark Lewis, a former senior Pentagon official who is now president and chief executive officer of the Purdue Applied Research Institute.

Pentagon officials are now debating how best to respond to this buildup. Some argue the U.S. should focus more on defensive systems, rather than missiles. Others say that even if U.S. adversaries have more hypersonic missiles, the state of American hypersonic weaponry -- even if not yet deployed -- will ultimately be more advanced. And not everyone agrees that a hypersonics arms race comes down to numbers of missiles. "If you have 10, should I have 11?" asked Heidi Shyu, the Pentagon top technologist.

Last year, the Air Force awarded Raytheon Technologies, now known as RTX, a nearly billion-dollar contract to develop a hypersonic cruise missile that would be launched from an aircraft and is designed to strike enemy ships. The Army hoped to have ready this year the U.S. military's first hypersonic weapon -- missiles that would be launched from trucks.

Progress has been halting, in part, because hypersonic weapons are notoriously difficult to develop. Traveling at faster than a mile a second generates heat exceeding 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, beyond the limit of most materials.

Cost is also an issue. Hypersonic missiles are about one-third more than ballistic missiles with comparable capabilities, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The bigger challenge may be for the Pentagon to decide, after so many years and so much spent, what sort of capabilities it wants in its arsenal. The U.S. military is currently pursuing two different types of hypersonic weapons: cruise missiles that use an air-breathing jet engine known as a scramjet, and glide vehicles that are launched from the air, and then glide to their targets at high speeds.

The Pentagon is funding about a half dozen different hypersonic weapons -- though the exact number is secret -- and some former officials suggest there is no clear plan for deciding which of these to field and how. "There wasn't a strategy during my time at the Pentagon," said William Roper, the former head of Air Force acquisition. "And from what I can see from the outside, there doesn't appear to be one now."

One of the biggest stumbling blocks is a lack of infrastructure needed for testing. Developing the weapons requires testing in wind tunnels that can replicate the unique aerodynamic pressures of hypersonic flight.

The U.S. has about 26 wind tunnels capable of testing hypersonic weapons, but many are decades old, according to the Government Accountability Office. Almost all of them are booked more than a year in advance.

The lack of testing infrastructure caught the attention of Steve Feinberg, founder of the private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. Feinberg, whom President Donald Trump appointed to head a key intelligence panel in 2018, had been receiving high-level briefings on hypersonic weapons. The briefings prompted Cerberus to buy a California-based company called Stratolaunch, according to those familiar with the purchase. Stratolaunch had built the world's largest aircraft to launch a manned space vehicle into orbit. The aircraft will soon be used to launch hypersonic test vehicles to help develop weapons.

Stratolaunch is one of a growing number of firms riding a wave of enthusiasm among some in the Pentagon to link private capital with the defense market. New hypersonics-focused companies are popping up to provide test services, rocket motors and even aircraft.

The Army's plan for the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon this year was thrown into doubt after an early March test flight was canceled at the last minute. The service scrubbed the flight after pretest checks showed that a battery failed to activate. Another test was canceled earlier this month. The Army now says it won't deploy the weapon until after a successful test.

Also in March, the Air Force nixed its most advanced hypersonic program, developed by Lockheed Martin, after several test failures. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told lawmakers the service would instead concentrate on Raytheon's hypersonic cruise missile, a prototype of which isn't expected to be ready until at least 2027." [1]

1. China and Russia Outrun U.S. In Race for Hypersonic Missiles --- Superfast weapons can evade most air defenses. Weinberger, Sharon. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 16 Sep 2023: A.1.