Coming to a War Near You: Hypersonic Weapons

Harry J. Kazianis

Security,

There are a lot of questions when it comes to hypersonic weapons. We have the answers. 

There is a great deal of talk about hypersonic weapons and their possible impact on the battlefield. Some consider them the ultimate weapon of war, others feel they are merely an evolutionary development along a predictable track.

So just how dangerous could these weapons become in the future? Who is developing them? Would America be able to defend against them? To get some answers, I put these questions to Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments senior fellows Bryan Clark and Mark Gunzinger.

Kazianis: Hypersonic weapons are all the rage in defense circles these days—a recent article in Politico seems to suggest as much. Which country would you say at this point is furthest along in its research on deploying an actual usable hypersonic weapon? What are the potential bottlenecks in such advanced R&D?

Clark & Gunzinger: The United States, China and Russia are all aggressively developing hypersonic weapons. In terms of operationalizing a usable weapon, I believe the United States and Russia are very close. China has hypersonic technology, but is mostly working on boost-glide weapons that are essentially ballistic missiles with a hypersonic missile as the warhead. These will be too large and costly to be an operationally useful weapon system that is used in significant numbers. The United States and Russia are also working on air-launched hypersonic weapons that are smaller, less expensive and more operationally relevant.

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