US accelerating push for hypersonic weapons
PORTLAND, Maine – Lagging behind Russia in developing hypersonic weapons, the U.S. Navy is rushing to field its first, with installation on a warship starting as soon as late next year.
The U.S. is in a race with Russia and China to develop these weapons, which travel at speeds akin to ballistic missiles but are difficult to shoot down because of their maneuverability.
The Russian military said it has deployed hypersonic missiles, claiming on Saturday and Sunday to have deployed them against targets in Ukraine, marking the weapon’s first use in combat. The Pentagon couldn’t confirm a hypersonic weapon was used in the attacks.
The American military is accelerating development to catch up.
The U.S. weapon would launch like a ballistic missile and would release a hypersonic glide vehicle that would reach speeds seven to eight times faster than the speed of sound before hitting the target.
In Maine, General Dynamics subsidiary Bath Iron Works has begun engineering and design work on changes necessary to install the weapon system on three Zumwalt-class destroyers.
The work would begin at a yet-to-benamed shipyard sometime in the fiscal year that begins in October 2023, the Navy said.
Hypersonic weapons are defined as anything traveling beyond Mach 5, or five times faster than the speed of sound. That’s about 3,800 mph. Intercontinental ballistic missiles far exceed that threshold but travel in a predictable path, making it possible to intercept them.
The new weapons are maneuverable. Existing missile defense systems, including the Navy’s Aegis system, would have trouble intercepting such objects because maneuverability makes their movement unpredictable and speed leaves little time to react.
Russia said it has ballistic missiles that can deploy hypersonic glide vehicles, as well as a hypersonic cruise missile.
The U.S. is “straining just to catch up” because it did not invest in the new technology, with only a fraction of the 10,000 people who were working on the program in the 1980s, said U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat who’s chair of a subcommittee that monitors the program.
“If we want to pursue parity, we will need to back this effort with more money, time, and talent than we are now,” he said.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine serves as a backdrop as the Pentagon releases its budget proposal that lays out its goals for hypersonics and other weapon systems later this month.
The three stealthy Zumwalt-class destroyers to be equipped with the new weapons have plenty of space to accommodate them because of a design failure that works to the Navy’s advantage in this instance.
The ships were built around a gun system that was supposed to use Gpsguided, rocket-boosted projectiles to pound targets 90 miles away. But those projectiles proved to be too expensive, and the Navy canceled the system, leaving each of the ships with a useless loading system and two 155mm guns hidden in angular turrets.
The retrofit of all three ships will likely cost more than $1 billion but will give a new capability to the tech-laden, electric-drive ships that already cost the Navy $23.5 billion to design and build, said Bryan Clark, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute.