Given that the bomber gap, missile gap and the cruiser gap was all shown to be fictional, I do wonder if the perceived hypersonic gap is real.
Historically, most of the bugs in new US hypersonic designs stem from an unwillingness to sacrifice terminal guidance performance for the sake of velocity. Sensor packages rapidly and unavoidably disintegrate due to atmospheric ablation in-flight, which makes terminal guidance very difficult (because your sensors barely work by the time they get to the target). Anyone can build a hypersonic missile if you are willing to forego high-quality terminal guidance, and most do. This is an extremely difficult engineering problem when operating at the fundamental limits of material physics but the US has been unwilling to field systems that don't address it.
Tangential: the USA had a mach 5 phoenix missile back in the 1970s on the F-14 and now they're re-fitting them with new guidance/etc to make a hypersonic test bed.
*1: Of course, when you're going hypersonic you only need tens of minutes to travel to the other side of the Earth.
This is in 1975.
That's a pretty fast missile...
(RV zips by at 3x the speed)
There are various types of ballistic missiles that go faster than this (and have been doing for decades) but since they are old they aren't as sexy as "hypersonic missiles".
The technology of a HGV and a maneuverable re-entry vehicle are essentially the same. The main reason for talking about "hypersonics" as a separate category today is to emphasize flight profiles that would not be interpreted as nuclear strikes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dl9Ovwmnxw&t=220s
I think this is the first video on that channel where the subject can match the guy's cadence. It's a great overview of the development of the Sprint though, worth watching if it's of interest.
Terminal ballistic missile defense is hard!
Who could build something like that today?
Air breathing hypersonics at altitude are real though. The US has successfully tested scramjets in the past. And currently has the HAWC program which has successfully flown twice now.
I think it's quite understandable why this is the case - imagine spending hundreds of billions on carrier procurement, and simultaneously developing a weapon that more or less renders them obsolete.
The situation has changed in that there's news that the Russians and Chinese have overtaken the US in this field, as well as the Chinese started fielding similarly high-end carriers of their own, creating a legitimate target for US hypersonics.
Also lack of proper spending priorities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJkmcNjh_bg
And corruption: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9i47sgi-V4
Russia’s reactive armour had egg cartons in place of explosive. The same oligarchs are delivering these weapons. Meanwhile, Moscow’s “smart” weapons missed entire airfields.
Too many people conflate the US deeming a weapons technology relatively ineffective given the (classified) capability matrix of their other systems with them not having the technology. Hypersonic endo-atmospheric guided missiles, for example, is an area where the US has deep design expertise going back several decades. They were designing and testing hypersonic guided missiles for battlefield(!) use in the 1980s.
Now after shaking off decades of counter insurgency warfare and pivoting to address a multipolar world instead it's not surprising they want to change up the mix. It doesn't mean there's some dire technology or capability gap fundamentally however.
Military stuff is entire operational systems vs other operational systems, yet nearly all these forum warrior conversations treat it as some sort of swipe left or swipe right pairwise comparison of two pieces of specific equipment.
Almost every weapon or weapon system can be described as defensive or offensive, depending on the motives of the person discussing said systems.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Shand... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_aircraft_carrier_Fujia...
No ski jump but still only conventionally powered.
Carriers are by no means obsolete, and ballistic missile defense is one of the things the Navy prioritizes heavily, and has done, for ages. Even for the DF-21 a carrier strike group is a tough nut to crack.
China's carriers are still a couple generations away from being at parity to the US fleet.
Sensationalized bait headline articles are not a good source for learning about this stuff. https://twitter.com/RickJoe_PLA writes for the large media brands with some regularity, and is strict about sticking to a substantive factual basis for everything.
This leads me to believe we're never going to get an accurate picture of the state of a weapon development program through the press. Is the F-35 program in trouble, or not? If it was why would you let your adversaries know this?
It's an interesting question to consider.
just off the top of my head:
- dramatic improvements in military IT (search for recent story "just give us new computers")
- more investments in unmanned combat systems
- just buy more of the things that work...numbers matter
etc etc
Isn't that why we should invest in hypersonic missiles? It is a relatively cheap unmanned alternative to building aircraft carriers (and the obligatory fighters), and other large vulnerable systems.
That's not always true. Numbers can matter but certain technological leaps render whole classes of weapon systems obsolete.
- desperately needs a new self-propelled howitzer, as the M109 is a 60-year-old design that has been upgraded to its limit, and can no longer perform adequately in a modern near-peer engagement
- the AIM-120 AMRAAM is outclassed by other beyond visual range air-to-air missiles developed in the last 30 years
- the OH-58 Kiowa, based on the Bell JetRanger, was the Army's scout helicopter for decades -- but was retired in 2020 without a replacement
- the Ticonderoga-class cruiser, which was the first incarnation of the Aegis anti-air and anti-ballistic-missile system, is being retired without a replacement, forty years after it entered service -- its planned replacement, CG(X), was cancelled, and so more Arleigh-Burke class destroyers with larger Mark-41 VLS cells are being shoehorned in
- the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer, which also has the Aegis system, is still in production after 34 years because the Zumwalt-class that would've replaced it was a total flop due -- its eight-inch Advanced Gun System requiring bespoke ammunition on the order of $800,000 per round
These are all replacement programs that could have been (and in some cases were) started over a decade ago, but we are just now seeing the fruits of some of the very long development processes.
- the ERCA (Extended-Range Cannon Artillery) is not forecasted to enter service until 2025
- the AIM-260 is meant to enter production this year
- there is currently an ongoing competition between Sikorsky and Boeing to build the Army's next scout helicopter
- the DDG(X) program will replace both ship classes eventually, but is not even meant to begin construction until 2028
Meanwhile, one shining example of the successful replacements of older programs is the Virginia-class submarine. It remains one of the few examples of American military procurement that was delivered ahead of schedule and under budget, while still being a success.