Hypersonic weapons have been the big talk at the Pentagon of late. Early this week US defense officials unveiled that America’s classified hypersonics program will undergo a “very aggressive” expansion over the course of the next year. This is to include expanded testing, including at least "four initial flight tests of prototypes for glide bombs that can fly five times the speed of sound and maneuver en route," according Bloomberg.
But after over the past two years both Russia and China have hyped their own advancing programs (Putin has touted that his Avangard hypersonic missile as “invincible”), which many analysts believe could be further along than the US program, the more pressing worry is how to defend against the nearly impossible to stop high-tech weapon. Hypersonic missiles, such as the kind Russia has lately tested, “are hard to stop, they can maneuver, they’re unpredictable” and “hard to detect” so “you don’t have a lot of time” to respond — Mike White, the Defense Department’s assistant director for hypersonics was quoted this week as saying.
Toward this end, the Pentagon is pursuing experimental interceptor technology designed to take out possible incoming hypersonics.
