Communist China surprise us again, while we are still planning to finish our own version of the hypersonic missile by 2025 – China already tested its nuclear-capable hypersonic missile.
It all falls back to Biden’s weak leadership, he has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to technology instead of focusing all his time destroying Trump’s legacy.
China’s test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, which circled the globe before speeding toward its target, has taken the global strategic community by surprise, not just due to the experiment itself but also the fact that it was kept a secret for two months.
On Sunday, The Financial Times cited five unnamed people familiar with the test to report that the Chinese military launched a rocket in August that carried a hypersonic glide vehicle, which flew through low-orbit space before cruising down towards its target.
“We have no idea how they did this,” one of the five people told FT.
The news outlet added, “The US, Russia and China are all developing hypersonic weapons, including glide vehicles that are launched into space on a rocket but orbit the earth under their own momentum. They fly at five times the speed of sound, slower than a ballistic missile. But they do not follow the fixed parabolic trajectory of a ballistic missile and are maneuverable, making them harder to track.”
Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe warned earlier this year that the Biden administration was in for a shock once they were finally brought up to speed on the advancements that the Chinese military has made in recent years.
Ratcliffe said that “China has closed the gap” in certain areas which he could not reveal because “it poses a national security threat to acknowledge that, but there are places where China’s frankly doing a better job, and it’s further down the curve on some technology issues than we are, and that’s never been the case before.”
The Pentagon is currently trying to find ways to drive down the cost of hypersonic missiles, which are far superior to cruise missiles, but also more expensive.
Way back in July Reuters reported this:
Russia said on Monday it had successfully tested a Tsirkon(Zircon) hypersonic cruise missile, a weapon President Vladimir Putin has touted as part of a new generation of missile systems without equal in the world.
The defence ministry said in a statement that the missile had been fired from the Admiral Gorshkov, a warship located in the White Sea, and travelled at around seven times the speed of sound before hitting a ground target on the coastline of the Barents Sea more than 350 km (217 miles) away.
The Chinese military unveiled hypersonic weapons back in 2019.
“We’re no longer in a period of overwhelming American dominance but rather one in which our armed forces are adapting to fight against near-peer competitors who are fielding increasingly sophisticated capabilities,” said Randall G. Schriver, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs. “Instead of expecting to dominate an opponent, our armed forces are learning to expect to be contested throughout a fight while achieving the political objectives set for them.”
The Wall Street Journal highlighted one of the weapons that were revealed that has defense experts concerned:
The Dongfeng-17, or DF-17, is thought to be China’s first operational missile mounted with a hypersonic glide vehicle — capable of flying at more than five times the speed of sound — and the first such weapon deployed anywhere in the world, defense experts said. Once launched, the missile is designed to release a hypersonic glide vehicle that can cruise at relatively low altitude and speeds above Mach 5, or about 3,400 miles an hour, changing direction if needed. That allows it to evade current missile defense systems.
Sources: DailyWire, Financial Times, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal
