Russia and China do not want an exchange of nuclear strikes more than the United States, the American edition of SpaceNews reports a statement by the former Deputy Defense Minister for Research and Technical Development of the United States (under the administration of President Donald Trump) Michael Griffin .
According to him, Moscow and Beijing currently have less developed conventional armed forces than Washington. On the other hand, the presence of hypersonic gliders gives Russia and China an advantage over the United States. "They can bring us down to their level with the right destructive technology. Hypersonic weapons are just such a destructive technology," the former head of NASA (under the administration of George W. Bush) was afraid.
Griffin called the ratio of the costs of Russia and China for the production of missiles that can destroy an American aircraft carrier to its cost terrifying. "They launch a missile worth maybe several million dollars or even tens of millions of dollars, and two or three of them can destroy an aircraft carrier," the former deputy defense minister said.
According to Griffin, in order to counter the Russian and Chinese threat, the United States should actively develop satellite groupings that allow tracking missile threats, and increase investments in the development of its own hypersonic weapons by an order of magnitude.
Thus, the former head of NASA reacted to the test conducted in July by China, presumably, of a partially orbital bombing system.
In December 2019, in a column on Defense News, the former US Deputy Secretary of Defense for Research and Technical Development wrote that the Soviet Union lost to the United States in the Cold War, because the latter preferred to use the principle of "money instead of blood" wherever possible.
In March 2018, Griffin said that in the 2020s, one of the most promising types of weapons in outer space will be a neutron cannon.
Ivan Potapov
