[1] https://xcancel.com/CNSpaceflight/status/1993158707056984359
All three countries have denied providing nuclear weapons tech to Pakistan - there is credible history to account for both Pakistan and India to have independantly developed enrichment programs and weapons on their own*.
All things are possible, a plausible explanation for the flurry of accusations against China from 2000 onwards from both the US State Dept. and India was the bald fact that the US, the premier global atomic watchdog, was caught absolutely pants down and blindsided by the events of 1998** ... India detonated a series of nuclear weapons tests and Pakistan responded within 30 days with a slightly longer series ( 5 blasts Vs six in response .. IIRC )
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_and_weapons_of_mass_d...
** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokhran-II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagai-I
U.S. Intelligence and India’s Nuclear Tests: Lessons Learned - https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/98-672.html
The U.S. Intelligence Community did not have advance knowledge that India intended to conduct nuclear tests beginning on May 11, 1998.Also, as the Iranians have recently demonstrated, the way to get get past someone's defences is to deploy multiple warheads (and a pile of random debris) from a cheap missile, not to bet on exotic hypersonic weapons.
The V2 was not a hypersonic missile, it was a ballistic missile that had a predetermined flight path that was easy to predict. The distinguishing factor of hypersonic missiles is that they do not require a ballistic trajectory to achieve their speeds (and are hence, much harder to detect) and they maintain maneuverability throughout their entire flight path.
https://www.sipri.org/commentary/topical-backgrounder/2022/m...
> The ancestor of ballistic missiles, Germany’s [...] V-2 was first launched in the 1940s. During ascent, it could reach a speed greater than Mach 5 and could do so again momentarily on its way back down. But, no one would claim that the V-2 was a hypersonic missile. In a similar vein, should one apply this label to modern intercontinental ballistic missiles that reach speeds beyond Mach 20 at ascent and re-entry?
> Certainly not, and there are other characteristics commonly cited when defining ‘hypersonic missiles’. However, while a combination of defining characteristics is increasingly adopted among experts, hypersonic missiles are often not well understood within public discussions in politics and the media [...]. The US-based Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance states that ‘hypersonic weapons refer to weapons that travel faster than Mach 5 (~3800mph) and have the capability to maneuver during the entire flight.’