Submission + - New frontier of Arm Race - Hypersonic Vehicles (freebeacon.com)
The United States was first to develop near-space strike vehicles. Under the Prompt Global Strike program back when Bush was still the POTUS, the X-51, a scramjet powered hypersonic vehicle by Boeing, the HTV-2, a glide strike vehicle, and the X-37 space plane launched atop a rocket were developed
Now the Russian and the Chinese are getting into the act and are betting heavily on their own hypersonic weapons in an attempt to close the gap, and even trying to surpass what US has achieved so far
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said July 3 that Russian missile manufacturers must master the technology for both precision-guided and hypersonic weapons. Moscow has set a goal of 2020 to build its first hypersonic missile prototype
The Chinese military is working on a jet-powered hypersonic cruise missile in addition to an advanced high-speed glide warhead that was tested earlier this year
Large numbers of Chinese military writings in recent years have focused on hypersonic flight. The Chinese report outlines in technical detail how a scramjet-powered cruise vehicle operates at speeds greater than Mach 5 and discusses how to integrate airframe design with scramjet propulsion
The scramjet cruise vehicle was described in a technical military journal called Command Control & Simulation. The article was published by the 716 Research Institute of the state-run China Shipbuilding Industry Corp., China’s largest maker of warships, submarines, and torpedoes. China’s hypersonic weapons are among the most secret programs within the Chinese military, along with anti-satellite weapons and cyber warfare tools
Larry Wortzel, a former China-based military intelligence officer, said Chinese hypersonic arms are what Beijing calls “assassins’ mace” weapons that will give China a strategic edge in any future conflict with the United States. “China is continuing with a number of programs to develop what Beijing considers to be ‘assassins’ mace’ weapons that defeat conventional defenses, including these hypersonic strike vehicles,”