The department believes that the United States is lagging behind in terms of possible launches of such weapons in terms of operational characteristics.
According to TASS, Michael White, deputy director for hypersonic development at the Pentagon’s research and development department, speaking on Wednesday during a video conference at the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that US opponents are creating new capabilities and have a significant arsenal of hypersonic missiles.
“Our adversaries have a significant stock of ballistic missiles, they are developing a significant stock of hypersonic missiles”, – he said.
White made it clear that the United States is lagging behind on the issue of possible launches of such weapons in terms of operational characteristics.
“We are developing a hypersonic system to ensure the ability to control the time frame of the confrontation, which is necessary to contain future conflict”, – added a spokesman for the Pentagon.
Despite the streamlined wording “opponents”, we are talking about Russia, the only country in the world that possesses such weapons.
“Over the past decade, potential adversaries have decided to switch to hypersonic systems and are creating new potential. This is seriously compressing the time frame of the confrontation”, – said White.
“Before we could afford not to move in this direction, now we do not have such a luxury. They have potential that we do not have”.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his annual messages to the Federal Assembly in 2018-2019, announced the creation of new types of strategic weapons by Russia: the Sarmat missile system with a heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, the Avangard missile system with a gliding cruise warhead, and a laser combat complex “Peresvet”. Also on the list there are “Dagger” aviation missile system with a hypersonic cruise missile, the strategic “Burevestnik” complex, the “Poseidon” unmanned underwater vehicle.