ARMS RACE?

It was not until 2011 — after several dramatic failures — that the first test of a hypersonic weapon was successful: A US Army missile launched from Hawaii was able to hit a target in the Marshall Islands, some 3700km distant, with less than 30 minutes flight time.

Then, in 2013, the US Air Force successfully fired the X-51 Waverider hypersonic vehicle from an old B-52 bomber.

X-51 Waverider

China sat up and took notice: “Once it has functional capabilities, it will be used to implement conventional strikes against our nuclear missile forces and will force us into a disadvantaged, passive position,” a People’s Liberation Army publication warned that same year.

Within months, China engaged in the first of its own long series of tests to attain hypersonic weapon capabilities.

Things came to a head early in 2018.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in March that his forces had finished testing an ‘invincible’ Mach 10 hypersonic cruise missile. He boasted it could “also manoeuvre at all phases of its flight trajectory, which also allows it to overcome all existing and, I think, prospective anti-aircraft and antimissile defence systems, delivering nuclear and conventional warheads”.

Kinzhal 'Dagger'

His was not the first boast.

But it was but one in a quick succession of similar claims.

Just a few months earlier, in December 2017, Beijing declared it had successfully tested the first of what was to be a mass-production hypersonic weapon, the DF-17 ballistic missile. It is designed to boost a glider vehicle to more than 5000km/h before loosing it to plunge, under guidance, to its target.

Then, in February, Beijing announced it had successfully fitted an experimental electromagnetic rail gun to a warship. Such ‘superguns’ do away with the need for gunpowder producing high-pressure gas to propel projectiles. Instead, rail guns accelerate projectiles using magnetic fields. In doing away with the heat and pressure, the gun can potentially fire projectiles many times faster — and further.

Starry Sky-2

In June, Beijing also claimed it had developed a reliable solid-fuel ramjet to power a new generation of hypersonic air-to-air missiles.

Is there an arms race? And is the West falling behind?

“If you believe everything China and Russia says, yeah,” says Mr Yelland. “I don’t think it’s wrong to assume we’re on the back foot. But I don’t actually put a lot of credence in anything that other than the fact they know something like hypersonics is an important technology.”

Nor would he call it an arms race, yet.

“It’s definitely a technology that is becoming more real. And therefore it has to be considered. If it’s a technology that a country like the US feels they’re on back foot with, then it’s something they put a high priority on.”

Which is why the US Pentagon in 2018 called for urgent submissions to revive its own hypersonic weapons program:

“China’s hypersonic weapons development outpaces ours … we’re falling behind,” Admiral Harry Harris — soon to be the next US ambassador to South Korea — declared in February. “We need to continue to pursue that and in a most aggressive way to ensure that we have the capabilities to both defend against China’s hypersonic weapons and to develop our own offensive hypersonic weapons.”