Gen. David Thompson: 'It’s now time to look at how we can defend against hypersonic missiles'

WASHINGTON — The United States is playing catchup in a new arms race to build advanced hypersonic missiles that travel at five times the speed of sound and can maneuver to evade defenses, the vice chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force Gen. David Thompson said Nov. 20.

“We’re not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in terms of hypersonic programs,” Thompson said at the Halifax International Security Forum.

The U.S. Air Force, Army and Navy are developing hypersonic missiles “but I will say that we have a lot of catching up to do very quickly,” said Thompson. “The Chinese have had an incredibly aggressive hypersonic program for several years.”

Of concern for the United States is China’s demonstrated capability to deploy a hypersonic glide vehicle to space that can orbit the planet and reenter the atmosphere before it can be detected by U.S. missile-defense sensors. China said the vehicle it tested was an unarmed experiment but U.S. officials warned that these weapons could be armed with conventional or nuclear warheads, turning them into a destabilizing strategic capability.

“The world just became a much more more complicated place,” Thompson said.

He compared a hypersonic glide vehicle to a “magical snow ball.” Normally, “if I’m throwing a snowball at you, the instant that snowball leaves my hand you have a sense of whether or not it’s going to hit you.”

That is how strategic warning systems have operated for decades. “A hypersonic missile changes that game entirely,” he said. The hypersonic missile does not travel in a predictable trajectory. “Combine that with a fractional orbital bombardment system, I’m going to throw the snowball, it’s going to go around the world and it’s going to come in and hit you in the back of the head.”

“And so that’s the kind of thing we’re dealing with, that you no longer have that predictability. And so every launch, regardless of where it’s headed, now has the potential that it could be a threat,” said Thompson.

“And even if you can track that maneuvering weapon, you don’t know until very late in the flight where it’s going because it’s maneuvering the entire time … and you’re not sure whether it’s an attack,” he added. “You don’t know the target until the last minute. And so that changes the strategic warning game.”

Thompson did not say whether the Chinese are developing a fractional orbital bombardment system, a technology developed by the Soviet Union in the 1960s for the deployment of nuclear weapons in space.

‘Time to look at how we defend’

In response to Chinese and Russian advances in hypersonic glide vehicles, the Pentagon’s Space Development Agency and Missile Defense Agency are developing a global network of space sensors to detect and track these threats throughout their entire trajectory. MDA on Nov. 19 announced it has awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon to develop interceptor missiles that can hit a hypersonic glide vehicle in flight.

“We’ve done well for years developing defenses against ballistic missiles,” said Thompson. “We have great capabilities against so called supersonic air breathing aircraft, we can detect cruise missiles. It’s now time to look at how we can defend against hypersonic missiles.”

On the question of why the United States has fallen behind in this technology, Thompson said he agreed with recently retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten that the Pentagon’s bureaucratic culture and complacency are part of the problem.

“In my personal opinion, I will say the bureaucracy that we built into our defense acquisition enterprise, not just in space, but in other areas, has slowed us down,” Thompson said. “The fact that we have not needed to move so quickly for a couple of decades has not driven us or required us to move that quickly.”

“We’ve really adopted an extreme risk averse posture in terms of developing and fielding these things because they are they are so incredibly expensive and claim so much of the national treasure,” he added.

“We need to create a different sort of approach to acquiring and fielding and operating these systems and we probably need to be in a position where we’re ready to accept a little more risk of failure so that we can speed up our processes.”

https://spacenews.com/space-force-general-u-s-has-a-lot-of-catching-up-to-do-on-hypersonic-missile-technology/

And why are you telling me or rather us. �

Righteousness 2 predictions gradually are coming to pass

Russia or China is the next world power

Deception... American taqqiya

And some people would swallow this obvious lie hook and sinker

Anyway, believe this at your peril

Believe this at your peril....

America is so cunning
Don’t believe them o
Nobody knew they had Nuclear Bomb before they bombed Japan

Some honest US experts have debunked the overall effectiveness of hypersonic weapons.

Cozbymaster97:
America is so cunning
Don’t believe them o
Nobody knew they had Nuclear Bomb before they bombed Japan

Lol! You can't build a missile without testing. When u fire it into the sky, satelite will pick it up. The Chinese denied testing hypersonic missile. But the missile was picked up by different satelites when it was released into the sky. In this day and age, some weapon can be built in secrecy but testing can not be done in secrecy Especially if it is a flying machine.

Cozbymaster97:
America is so cunning
Don’t believe them o
Nobody knew they had Nuclear Bomb before they bombed Japan

lies the world knew

When the US undergrades themselves , the one thinking to be at the top position should start worrying, because the reality
is way different.

abeeee:
lies the world knew

Go and read history

Cozbymaster97:

Go and read history

Bro the Manhattan project in los Alamos had scientist from Britain too
And how do you think the Russian built theirs ....they hide spies too so most world powers knew in fact the testing in July 16 alerted every big country so shut up with your go and read history shit

olugabbie:


Lol! You can't build a missile without testing. When u fire it into the sky, satelite will pick it up. The Chinese denied testing hypersonic missile. But the missile was picked up by different satelites when it was released into the sky. In this day and age, some weapon can be built in secrecy but testing can not be done in secrecy Especially if it is a flying machine.

Very correct.

panafrican:
When the US undergrades themselves , the one thinking to be at the top position should start worrying, because the reality
is way different.

The General wasn't undergrading US capabilities here, he simply stated an obvious fact. The US have been playing catch-up in missile technology since the last two decades.

While this current rap is part of a traditional scheme to get more fundings from the government, it is also true that they do not have hypersonic glide vehicles at the moment.

Eventually, they will catch-up because they have the finance and the manpower to do it. But for now, the unprecedented corruption in the MIC would make sure that they syphoned so much funds from the government in the name of Russian and Chinese threat. That's how America work.

Appleyard:


The General wasn't undergrading US capabilities here, he simply stated an obvious fact. The US have been playing catch-up in missile technology since the last two decades.

While this current rap is part of a traditional scheme to get more fundings from the government, it is also true that they do not have hypersonic glide vehicles at the moment.

Eventually, they will catch-up because they have the finance and the manpower to do it. But for now, the unprecedented corruption in the MIC would make sure that they syphoned so much funds from the government in the name of Russian and Chinese threat. That's how America work.

Lol war infrastructure looters!