Milley: China’s weapon test close to a ‘Sputnik moment’
WASHINGTON — A Chinese test of a hypersonic missile designed to evade U.S. nuclear defenses was “very close” to a “Sputnik moment” for the United States, Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday, the first official confirmation of how Beijing’s demonstration of its capabilities took American officials by surprise.
Two separate tests took place this summer, conducted in a fashion that Chinese officials knew would be highly visible to U.S. satellites. But the United States said nothing about it.
The test was notable because hypersonic missiles can quickly maneuver and alter course, flying below low-earth orbit. They are virtually impossible for existing U.S. defenses, designed for intercontinental ballistic missiles that follow a predictable path into space and reenter the atmosphere, to intercept. The Chinese test was conducted in a manner that made it clear the hypersonic missile could be launched to go over Antarctica; existing U.S. defenses are all pointed west and north over the Pacific, meaning they would be useless in countering an attack from the south.
The U.S. has not conducted a hypersonic weapon test of the sort Milley said China had achieved.
“What we saw was a very significant event of a test of a hypersonic weapon system, and it is very concerning,” Milley told David Rubinstein, the billionaire and philanthropist, who conducts an interview show on Bloomberg Television.
“I think I saw in some of the newspapers, they used the term Sputnik moment,”
he added. “I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it’s very close to that. So it’s a very significant technological event that occurred, or test that occurred, by the Chinese. And it has all of our attention.”
Sputnik was the launch, in 1957, of a Soviet satellite when Dwight Eisenhower was president. It created fear in Washington that the Soviets were getting ahead in the space race and led to President John F. Kennedy’s declaration in the 1960s that the United States would be the first to land humans on the moon, an accomplishment that was reached in less than a decade. But it also spurred the nuclear arms race of the 20th century, which was only tamped down in the past 30 years, after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
The U.S. has an active hypersonic program of its own, as do Russia and North Korea.
China has disputed Western news reports about its test, saying it was working on technology for a re-useable space vehicle for peaceful purposes.
Asked about Milley’s remarks, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said he was conveying concern about China’s military modernization. “They continue to pursue capabilities that increase tensions in the region,” she said. “And we continue to have concerns about that. And I think that was reflected in his comments.”
Some U.S. defense experts say the worry about China’s work on a hypersonic weapon that could deliver a nuclear weapon from space are overblown.
James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote in an essay last week that the U.S. has long been vulnerable to a Chinese nuclear attack.
“While the prospect of a nuclear attack against the United States is terrifying, this is no Sputnik moment partly because it’s not entirely clear what was tested, but mostly because the threat of a Chinese nuclear attack on the United States isn’t remotely new,” Acton wrote.