The purpose is to “light a fire underneath the entire hypersonic industry” and “encourage industry to pick up the pace,” according to two executives at two defense companies who’ve been invited to attend the meeting which is scheduled for Thursday.
The United States has “a lot of catching up to do very quickly,” according to US Space Force Gen. David Thompson, after recent hypersonic weapons tests by China and Russia surprised US national security officials and indicated the US is falling behind their main geopolitical rivals.
“We’re not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in terms of hypersonic programs,” Thompson said in November while speaking at the Halifax International Security Forum.
The Pentagon says Austin will deliver “brief framing remarks” at the beginning of next week’s meeting, but it will be chaired by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks as “part of her regular, drumbeat engagements with industry” to discuss “ways to accelerate the development of cutting-edge capabilities and new operational concepts.”
Top executives from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Leidos, Aerojet Rocketdyne, BAE Systems, L3Harris, and about a half dozen other defense companies have been invited to attend.
Traveling at Mach 5 or faster, hypersonic weapons are difficult to detect, posing a challenge to missile defense systems. Hypersonic missiles can travel at a far lower trajectory than high-arcing ballistic missiles, which can be easily detectable. They can also maneuver and evade missile defense systems.
China and Russia’s advances and recent failed tests have led the Pentagon to inject more urgency into the US program and increase the resources they are devoting to hypersonic weapons development. The FY22 budget committed $3.8 billion to hypersonic research, an increase from the previous year’s $3.2 billion.
While Russia and China are developing hypersonic weapons capable of carrying nuclear warheads, the US has focused its…
Source : cnn
