A top general provided a bleak warning about the state of U.S. hypersonic technology compared to Russia and China, both of which recently demonstrated developments in their own arsenals.
Gen. David Thompson, vice chief of space operations, said the United States has some “catching up to do very quickly” to match the growth from adversaries.
“We’re not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in terms of hypersonic programs,” he said during a Saturday appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum, according to Politico.
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Over the summer, China launched a hypersonic missile that circled the globe in a test that shocked U.S. defense officials. Additionally, Russia launched a missile last week that destroyed a satellite, sending more than a thousand pieces of debris scattered across space.
Both tests demonstrated newly achieved capabilities.
A number of defense officials have expressed their concern, while experts have called it a “wake-up call” for President Joe Biden.
Recently retired Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten warned his then-unknown predecessor to speed up the bureaucracies of the Pentagon, a message Thompson reiterated during the event.
“The bureaucracy that we’ve built into our defense and acquisition enterprise, not just in space but in other areas, has slowed us down in many areas,” Thompson said. “The fact that we have not needed to move quickly for a couple of decades, in the sense of a strategic competitor with these capabilities, has not driven us or required us to move quickly.”
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The general also told Politico the Space Force is looking to “figure out the type of satellite constellation that we need” to identify and trace these missiles.
“It’s a new challenge, but it’s not that we don’t have an answer to this challenge,” he said. “We just have to understand it, fully design it, and fly it.”
The U.S. is still a “year or two” away from fielding its own hypersonic weapon, said Gillian Bussey, director of DOD’s Joint Hypersonics Transition office, according to Air Force Magazine. The Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon will be the first U.S. hypersonic system “that was actually be deployed and … ready for use.”
The Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike System is not far behind, according to Bussey.
