(Newsweek)
Tom O'Connor 3/22/19 1:07 PM
The U.S. is racing to build missiles fast enough to stop Russia's latest hypersonic weapons, a threat the Pentagon admits it has no defense against.
A hypersonic weapon is one that travels in excess of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, and Russia has announced the development of several nuclear-capable weapons systems said to be capable of far exceeding that limit. On Wednesday, Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin told an energy weapons summit that "if war breaks out tomorrow, we’re probably not going to kill hypersonic boost-glide missiles," such as the one unveiled last year by Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to the Breaking Defense website.
Griffin said the future's answer to taking out such a weapon would be light-speed lasers, but until such technology can be deployed, "we’re going to have to go after the launch points" to neutralize the threat.
To do so, the Pentagon has begun investing in its own hypersonic capabilities on land, air and sea. As the Navy and Air Force pursue projects, the Army is reportedly seeking more than $1 billion to build the land-launched long-range hypersonic weapon over the next few years. As The Diplomat reported Friday, despite the weapon's name its range is actually about 1,400 miles, which means it was banned under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty that the U.S. suspended last month, with Russia quickly following suit.
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