US in hypersonic weapon ‘arms race’ with China, says Air Force secretary
- Frank Kendall noted that the US military has focused funds on Iraq and Afghanistan, but has taken its eye off the ball in terms of the next-generation arms
- Some older aircraft and drones are still useful, but ‘none of these things scare China’, the official says
The United States and China are engaged in an arms race to develop the most lethal hypersonic weapons, the US Air Force secretary said on Tuesday, as Beijing and Washington build and test more of the high-speed next-generation arms.
“There is an arms race, not necessarily for increased numbers, but for increased quality,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said during an interview in his Pentagon offices.
“It’s an arms race that has been going on for quite some time. The Chinese have been at it very aggressively.”
In October, the top US military officer, General Mark Milley, confirmed a Chinese hypersonic weapons test that military experts say appears to show Beijing’s pursuit of an Earth-orbiting system designed to evade American missile defences.
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This year the Pentagon has held several hypersonic weapons tests with mixed success. In October, the Navy successfully tested a booster rocket motor that would be used to power a launch vehicle carrying a hypersonic weapon aloft.
Hypersonic weapons travel in the upper atmosphere at speeds of more than five times the speed of sound, or about 6,200km/h (3,853mph).