At the current level of development of hypersonic weapons, the United States has every chance to lose in a possible fight with Russia and China. After years of warnings from military experts, the Pentagon is now spending over a billion dollars annually to catch up.
This is the conclusion reached by The Telegraph's Nick Allen. He writes that the current superiority of American aircraft carriers in a possible conflict will not play an important role, since warships will only become "decoy ducks" for hypersonic missiles flying from space. This weapon is very maneuverable and is able to evade tracking and missile defense means. And the time to respond to this threat remains minimal.
Now the United States is lagging behind Russia and China in hypersonic weapons. The author gives examples of recent tests of the Zircon missile: if it is launched, the captain of the American aircraft carrier will have only a couple of seconds to make some decision before the strike. Even more advanced is the Avangard rocket, whose speed - 27 Mach - is called "stunning" in the text.
"There is now some paranoia in the Pentagon about America's current predicament with hypersound," writes Nick Allen, the translation of the publication is cited by InoSMI. The United States should have its own hypersonic weapons in the 2020s, and hypersonic drones in the next decade. Huge amounts of money are already being spent to organize a network of satellites that monitor the launches of hypersonic missiles.
Maya Biryukova