The Chinese hypersonic weapons everyone is worried about is a boost glide vehicle. Basically a ballistic missile with a hypersonic lifting body as its warhead as opposed to a blunt body RV you usually see. This makes it more maneuverable and potentially harder to hit.
The weapon the air force tested today is similar to that but meant to be launched from bombers instead of ground launched.
The actual scary ones are hypersonic cruise missiles. Nobody has fielded one operationally yet. But the US is by far the furthest ahead in this technology. In march they had a successful test of HAWC the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept. Scramjet powered cruise missiles like HAWC are more dangerous than conventional ballistic missile or boost-glide missiles because they actually fly. And therefore can do the things normal cruise missiles like Tomahawk can do. They can take circuitous routes. They can change their altitude. They can fly somewhat evasively. They can fly to an area and pick targets of opportunity. And other things.
Why does it matter? We've gotten much better at shooting down conventional cruise missiles. A few years back an Arleigh Burke destroyer had a number of Chinese built subsonic anti ship missiles fired at it by Houthi Rebels. It shot down every single one of them. These missiles are comparable to the Neptunes that recently sank Moskva in terms of performance. So modern warships aren't as vulnerable as Soviet era antiques. You need better weapons to kill them. hypersonic cruise missiles are much harder to intercept. Boost glides are of dubious utility in my opinion.
So your impression is not correct. The Russians and the Chinese actually are much further along for all classes of hypersonic missiles.
They steal money from their military to buy yachts and mansions. Russia's wunderwaffe are not operational. The US spends more on its nuclear arsenal alone every year than Russia spends on its entire military. Where is the T-14? Where is the Su-57? They exist in propaganda videos and parades. That's it. You wont find them or zircon on the battlefield. Russia can't even afford to mass issue red dot sights to their infantry. Something America did 20 years ago. Do you really think they can afford some ridiculous scramjet cruise missile that does nothing to improve their national security?
The Russians/Soviets flew hypersonic missile prototypes before the millennium (at hypersonic speeds) - and NASA verified it. I see no reasons they can't do it again.
The rest of your response is not relevant.
And besides, if the Russians really lied about these tests conducted within US AWACS range, they'd be called out. That they haven't is tacit confirmation.
Russia cannot afford to field these wunderwaffe. Its simple economics.
https://nitter.net/kamilkazani/status/1526323072483065857
Russian ex-Military and his prophetic (uncannily precise) predictions of what awaited RF in Ukraine and world at large. He discusses the fabled missiles in passing. (Google translate does a good job.)
Sure, but ballistic trajectories are trivially interceptible. It's not just about speed. The new arms race is with hypersonic glide vehicles that are capable of maneuvering all the way to the target at mach 8+. With that, the weapon becomes impossible to intercept with any existing technology.
Except the associated plasma shielding makes it invisible to radar. And the Russian ones are capable of sea skimming and maneuvering at mach 8 in the terminal phase. At those speeds, you're talking horizon to impact in seconds. We really have nothing that can touch it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M22_Zircon
We like to think of ourselves as massively advanced beyond Russia and China, and we are to an extent. But the reality is that the US military has wasted the last 20 years in pointless counterinsurgency operations that have narrowed our view to the actual threats we face, and de-prioritized this kind of cutting edge stuff. There's some serious catching up we'll need to do (both technologically and organizationally) to maintain deterrence against the rising conventional threats of authoritarian major powers.
You mean makes it very visible to radar but blocks any rf emissions to and from the vehicle itself right? This is no different than reentry effects we see on spacecraft. They are easily tracked by radar but have a radio blackout period until they slow down enough.
>And the Russian ones are capable of sea skimming and maneuvering at mach 8 in the terminal phase. At those speeds, you're talking horizon to impact in seconds. We really have nothing that can touch it.
The Russian missile is a paper invention for propaganda. It effectively does not exist. And if it does then they only built one. It is not an operational weapon and never will be. Russia is a poor country that is run by thieves who siphon money from their military to buy mansions and yachts. Just like T-14 and Su-57, Zircon is a propaganda wunderwaffe that will never be in combat.
China is bigger problem. But at the moment they have just fielded boost-glide vehicles. Not scramjets.
All hypersonic ballistic missile reentry vehicles have this plasma stealth. That doesn't stop Aegis BDM from tracking and intercepting them. Have you ever seen a reentry vehicle coming in? They're as bright as meteorites, very easy to see.
> And the Russian ones are capable of sea skimming and maneuvering at mach 8 in the terminal phase.
These are the hypersonic cruise missiles; very different from hypersonic boost-glide missiles. This is what I mean about the media talking about "hypersonic" generically without specifying the technology they're actually talking about; it leads to people believing that 'hypersonic' is itself the technology.
Anything moving mach 8 is gonna light up like a Christmas tree in other parts of the EM spectrum.
A SLBM (sub-launched ballistic missile) can reach a coastal target in less than five minutes depending on the exact trajectory. Good luck trying to intercept that.