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America Outstripped by China and Russia in Hypersonic Weapons Race
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - The U.S. is lagging behind China in its development of hypersonic weapons technologies, according to senior Pentagon officials.
“China has tested more hypersonic weapons than we have in a decade,” said Dr. Michael Griffin, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, of the worrying disparity, which would allow China to strike targets anywhere in the world in under an hour.
Hypersonic weapons are projectiles that travel 5 times the speed of sound or about 3,853 miles per hour, can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads, and allow for a variety of trajectories that conventional defense systems are not up-to-date in their ability to intercept.
“We do not have defenses against those systems,” Griffin told the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 2018.
The Pentagon has dedicated 2 billion dollars of its budget this year to accelerate its development of the new technology in a bid to outpace Russia and China, who have both conducted successful hypersonic weapons tests in the last year.
In his State of the Union address in March 2018, Vladimir Putin cited the U.S. and NATO buildup of anti-ballistic weapons systems along the Russian border in Eastern Europe as the reason for Russia’s interest in the technology.