American races: the head of the US Navy compared the advantage of Russia in the field of hypersound with the launch of the first satellite

The US Navy in 2020 will begin to test their own developments in the field of hypersonic weapons. About this in a note to the entire Navy personnel said the acting Minister of this type of the US Armed Forces Thomas Modley.

He also compared the current situation with the lag of Americans from Russia and China in the field of hypersound with the launch by the Soviet Union of the first artificial Earth satellite in 1957. According to him, then the United States was forced to rush to respond to this challenge.

“Looking back at the past, we understand that major technological breakthroughs, such as the creation of hypersonic weapons, can destabilize the global security environment and become a serious threat to our country,” Modley said.

According to him, the US Navy and the Marine Corps need to combine efforts, knowledge and experience to use "the full potential of the new hypersonic weapons in the future."

“In reality, the possible ways of using hypersonic technologies have already changed the space of warfare, just as it was with nuclear technology in the last century. Therefore, when it comes to hypersonic weapons, we must announce the common team “Full Forward,” he added.

Earlier, Bloomberg reported that the Pentagon is aimed at a "very aggressive" campaign to develop hypersonic weapons in order to catch up with Moscow and Beijing in this area. So, for 2020, "at least four flight tests" of various prototypes are planned.

It should be noted that this is not the first time that American officials have claimed that the United States lags behind Russia and China in the development of hypersonic weapons.

So, in December 2019, the head of the Pentagon, Mark Esper, noted that the Americans are “forced to catch up” with Moscow and Beijing and use “all available financial resources” for this. According to him, this was due to the fact that the United States “took a break” in this area.

However, then the deputy head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, General John Heiten, pointed out that the existing projects in the framework of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Programs (DARPA) were not successful.

“We had two programs ... - HTV-1 and HTV-2 under the auspices of DARPA. They did not work. What did we do after they failed? We began many years of research into these failures, and then closed the programs. They’re not accelerating in this way, ”he stated during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on January 18.

However, some officials are trying to belittle the importance of these technologies. So, the chief of staff of the US Army, James McConville, said that Russian hypersonic weapons "do not significantly change" the balance of power in the world.

"Americans are at least a few years late."

According to the captain of the first rank, military expert Vasily Dandykin, it will be difficult for the Americans to close the current lag in hypersonic developments.

“Now, perhaps, everything is much more complicated than during the launch of the first satellite. Americans are at least a few years late. As for us, now both submarines of the Yasen-M type and frigate ships of the Admiral Gorshkov type (project 22350) are already honed under the Zircon hypersonic missile, which will really come into service almost in the near future, ” said the interlocutor of RT.

In turn, military expert Aleksey Leonkov noted that the US military structures over the past few years now and then declare their intentions to present their achievements in the field of hypersonic technologies, but the demonstrations are certainly postponed.

“Despite all their“ advertising claims, ”they really have problems. You need to understand that so far these are only plans. They had plans for previous developments, they said that hypersonic weapons would appear in 2018, then in 2019, now in 2020. Most programs for creating hypersonic weapons are closed, after which new programs were opened, ”the expert explained in an interview with RT.

In December 2019, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu at a conference call pointed out the need to increase the number of ships equipped with Zircon and Caliber hypersonic missiles. A month later, the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Admiral Nikolai Evmenov, announced that in the coming years the Zircon missile, which is capable of hitting targets at a distance of more than 1 thousand km, will be adopted by the Russian Navy. At the same time, in 2020, the Ministry of Defense intends to increase the speed of ammunition from nine to ten Mach numbers.