The U.S. Navy is rushing to field its first hypersonic weapon in a race with Russia and China to develop the new class of weapons, which travel at speeds akin to ballistic missiles but are difficult to shoot down because of their maneuverability.
The work would begin at a yet-to-be-named shipyard sometime in fiscal year that begins in October 2023, the Navy said.
The U.S. is “straining just to catch up” because it failed to invest in the new technology, with only a fraction of the 10,000 people who were working on the program in the 1980s, said U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat who’s chair of a subcommittee that monitors the program. The three stealthy Zumwalt-class destroyers to be equipped with the new weapons have plenty of space to accommodate them — thanks to a design failure that works to the Navy’s advantage in this instance.The ships were built around a gun system that was supposed to use GPS-guided, rocket-boosted projectiles to pound targets 90 miles away.
The U.S. focus on hypersonic weapons represents a pivot after hesitating in the past because of technological hurdles. Adversaries, meanwhile, continued research and development.
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