Cool your jets: Some perspective on the hyping of hypersonic weapons

ABSTRACT

Russia, China, and the United States are in a race to develop and deploy hypersonic glide weapons. Hypersonic vehicles are defined as moving at a speed greater than five times the speed of sound. The US Defense Department has claimed these weapons will provide revolutionary new capabilities and will present daunting new threats against which there is currently no effective defense. Such claims have been repeated with little skepticism in the public and trade press. Many of the claims made for hypersonic weapons are, however, overstated and much of what they can do could be accomplished more easily and cheaply using better-established technology, typically via the modification of ballistic missile warheads.

KEYWORDS:

• Hypersonic gliders
• hypersonic cruise missiles
• ballistic missiles
• missile defense

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Ivanka Barzashka, Stephen Biddle, William Durch, Götz Neuneck, Evelyn Oelrich, Cameron Tracy, and Amy Woolf for helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Ivan Oelrich

Ivan Oelrich is a Senior Non-resident Scholar at the Elliott School, George Washington University and a Senior Non-resident Fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks.