A modern Sputnik moment: US must get up to speed on hypersonics

Sixty-six years ago, the Soviet Union shocked Americans by launching Sputnik, the globe’s first man-made satellite. While most at the time viewed the U.S. as a more advanced scientific power with the capability to dominate an impending space race, the harsh reality of the Soviets besting American technology came as not only a dire security threat but a national humiliation.

President Eisenhower made it a priority to catch up from this setback — just four months later, U.S. engineers sent an even more capable Explorer 1 into orbit. The Eisenhower administration then established NASA, to ensure that the United States would triumph in any future space competition.

Keeping this historic anecdote in mind today, it’s troubling how far we have fallen behind both the Russians and Chinese in terms of hypersonic weapons capabilities. We must get up to speed in responding to this challenge.

While the U.S. is seemingly stuck in the research and testing phase of hypersonic capabilities development (the acquisition “valley of death”), rival powers appear to have already fielded operational systems, which can be exceedingly difficult to defend against because of their high speed and maneuverability.

Among the headlines coming out of the war in Ukraine are Russia’s attacks with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, which are air-launched and alleged to be able to reach Mach 10 — ten times the speed of sound. Though the Ukrainians have cited examples of U.S. Patriot missiles shooting some down, the U.S. cannot yet offer its own hypersonic weapons to match the threat.

China is reportedly further along than Russia in hypersonic weapon deployment, which not only menaces Taiwan but by extension the United States. Moreover, China flexes its military muscle with the DF-17 medium-range ballistic missile and DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile, both equipped with hypersonic glide vehicles. In 2021, the Chinese sent a hypersonic weapon into low orbit, ominously foreshadowing potential first-strike capability worldwide.

Why is the U.S. seemingly so far behind? What is the holdup in U.S. fielding operational systems?

It’s not a lack of willingness to commit resources or a failure to appreciate the need for advanced weapons systems. In fact, we’ve seen a record-setting $842 billion Defense budget request for fiscal 2024, $11 billion of which is allotted for research, development, testing and evaluation of both hypersonic and long-range sub-sonic missiles.

To its credit, the Biden administration invoked the Defense Production Act’s Title III several months ago to “rebuild and expand the nation’s domestic hypersonic industrial base.” It was designed to dovetail with the president’s Executive Order on America’s Supply Chains of February 2021 to ensure our taxpayers are “buying American” as best we can. Moreover, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering has designated “Hypersonics” as one of its 2023 critical technology areas. And Congress has repeatedly, over the last five years, deemed the development of hypersonic capability as a key element of national defense.

The major disconnect between such emphasis and the ability to rapidly field such capability appears to stem from many years of mixed messages from the Department of Defense to the defense industry over the need for independent innovation and an unfocused goal with respect to hypersonic technology. The result is the all-too-common occurrence of DoD funding duplicative programs that do not move the needle geopolitically and still rely on continued annual funding by a Congress that is eager to see small success as a win but unwilling to continue to tolerate schedule delays and testing failures.

A prime example is the latest Air Force project Mayhem, a $334 million hypersonic weapons program in the middle of an identity crisis. Recent open-source reporting points to the development of a missile; however, digital renderings depict the possibility of a future airplane. It’s another questionable approach that will most likely be terminated like the many other hypersonic programs, such as the U.S. Air Force Air Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), or take an expensive circuitous route to becoming an overpriced drone. The lack of clarity and commitment to innovation beyond what our peer countries have already achieved will only continue to delay our ability to field our own hypersonic weapons.

At a recent conference of the National Defense Industrial Association, Congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado noted in a keynote address that hypersonics is “a technology that was born in America, but is being perfected by China and Russia.”

The current unfocused “fund everything and hope that something sticks” approach toward developing hypersonic capabilities is not fielding systems in a timely manner. This has resulted in a limited number of suppliers and limited production capacity along with a manufacturing, materials and testing infrastructure that does not support large scale development and timely fielding.

Complicating matters, the Congressional Budget Office issued a lukewarm review of hypersonics in a January 2023 report, noting “technological challenges must still be overcome” in order to field them. While not unreasonable to conclude at present, we must emphasize the importance of overcoming those challenges in order to match Chinese and Russian technological advances and not fall even further behind.

In sum, the government and the defense industry must cooperate to match resources with requirements. We can’t afford to wait for operational hypersonic systems indefinitely. The need to view the threat posed by Chinese and Russian hypersonic weapons must be treated as a national security threat similar to that posed by a Soviet Sputnika generation ago.

Donald P. Loren is Distinguished Professor of Practice at the National Defense University in Washington D.C. He is a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense, and former assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs.