American politicians have criticized the military for spending billions of dollars on a fruitless hypersonic weapons program.
A meeting of the members of the House of Representatives was held on the success of hypersonic weapons development programs, and it was revealed at this meeting that China was ahead of the curve and the United States had not made any progress in this area. , according to Military Times.
Pentagon officials, cross-examined by commissioners, acknowledged that China has hypersonic missiles capable of hitting targets outside of Japan and US territory in Guam, where US forces are based. The army also gave a report on what kind of hypersonic weapons the PRC has.
Hypersonic Chinese trump
According to US intelligence, China tested the DF-27 missile, which covered a distance of 2,100 km in just 12 minutes, in February. Also, China is actively developing not only hypersonic missiles, but also hypersonic aircraft, but there are no exact data on this.
Military experts remind once again that despite the billions of dollars spent and the ever-increasing defense budget, the US still lags behind China in developing important advanced weapons.
All this causes “great concern” among Pentagon representatives, and the ministry wants to ask the government for more money to develop an “American response” to the Chinese hyper-threat as soon as possible.
Where are billions of dollars going?
Of course, the House of Representatives immediately noted that the US military department has already spent huge resources on hypersonic programs that did not bring any results. Commission members reminded that the efforts to test the ARRW hypersonic missile had failed.
Commissioners recalled that other hypersonic weapons programs such as HACM or RDT&E cost American taxpayers several billion dollars and still have not had significant results. The programs are still in the concepts or pre-testing stages.
The Florida Republican did not miss the opportunity to anger the Pentagon by asking a rhetorical question: “Who should be punished more: the young idiot who leaked classified documents online (a hint Jack Teixeira – ed.) Or generals, admirals and pseudo-experts, this committee and Senate for decades? sitting in front of him, telling stories about hypersonic weapons, pumping billions of dollars out of the budget?
He also questioned the wisdom of building American aircraft carriers that might not see combat because they couldn’t defend against the Chinese hypersonic threat in the past 30 years.
How will the Pentagon respond?
Defense officials have justified that hypersonic weapons programs have stalled as developers and the military face technical difficulties, delays and lack of funding. For this reason, the Pentagon plans to increase the budget allocated to hypersonic weapons to 5 billion dollars in 2023.
The Army assures that with the help of its prime contractors Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman they will make every effort to equip the US Army with hypersonic weapons as soon as possible.
Collaboration with NASA, the Department of Energy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will also be strengthened.
Despite all assurances, the military could not even give an approximate date for when hypersonic weapons would become part of the US military.
Previously Focus He wrote that the first supersonic drone in history was created in the USA: why would he need a rocket?
Source: Focus
Ashley Fitzgerald is an accomplished journalist in the field of technology. She currently works as a writer at 24 news breaker. With a deep understanding of the latest technology developments, Ashley’s writing provides readers with insightful analysis and unique perspectives on the industry.