The US military has admitted that the United States is lagging behind Russia and China when it comes to hypersonic weapons development, according to The Hill.
“Right now we are helpless,” Republican US Senator James Inhofe, who sits on the Armed Services Committee, was quoted by The Hill as saying.
He was echoed by Thomas Karako from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank, who agreed that Russia and China are outpacing the United States in terms of developing “super-fast missile technology.”
“And the reason is the US hasn’t been doing anything near the same pace, both in terms of developing our own capabilities, but also failing to develop sensors and shooters necessary to shoot down theirs,” he underscored.
Earlier, General John Hyten, head of US Strategic Command, admitted during a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting that the US missile shield is unable to contain hypersonic weapons.
“We don’t have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us, so our response would be our deterrent force, which would be the triad and the nuclear capabilities that we have to respond to such a threat,” Hyten said.
In his state-of-the-nation address to the Federal Assembly on March 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin specifically touted the development of the country’s hypersonic weapons which he stressed is designed for defensive purposes.
These include the Avangard hypersonic missile capable of flying at speeds up to 20 Mach or more than 15,000 miles (about 24,000 kilometers) per hour.
Commenting on this, Alexey Leonkov, a former employee of the 30th Central Research Institute of Russia’s Aerospace Force told Sputnik that the Avangard missile renders US defenses totally useless.
