U.S. Increases Investment in Hypersonic Weapons

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.  He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.  

Congress has decided to accelerate the Trump administration’s movement into the age of hypersonic weapons.

These weapons are designed to travel at Mach 6 or more, which means they fly at least six times faster than the speed of sound compared to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) re-entry vehicles, which travel at supersonic speeds closer to Mach 5 or less. Next-generation hypersonic weapon technology is designed to thwart, through speed, all existing air and missile defense systems.

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