Hypersonics and the New Nuclear Space Race

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.  

OPINION — “The United States has actively pursued the development of hypersonic weapons—
maneuvering weapons that fly at speeds of at least Mach 5—as a part of its conventional prompt global strike program since the early 2000s. In recent years, the United States has focused such efforts on developing hypersonic glide vehicles, which are launched from a rocket before gliding [in low orbit] to a target, and hypersonic cruise missiles, which are powered by high-speed, air-breathing engines during flight.”

That’s from a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on Hypersonic Weapons released on October 19, one day before Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley was asked during an interview with David Rubenstein, whether Americans should be worried about Chinese tests of a possibly nuclear-capable, hypersonic missile.

Milley’s response was, “What we saw, and I don’t want to get too much into the classification, … was a very significant event of a test of a hypersonic weapon system, and it is very concerning.”

His remarks have caused headlines ever since and raised questions about whether the U.S. has fallen behind in a significant arms race, not just with China, but with Russia as well.

The answer is maybe, but only because, as the October 19 CRS report said, “the Department of Defense (DOD) has not established any programs of record for hypersonic weapons, suggesting that it may not have approved either mission requirements for the systems or long-term funding plans.”

One reason is the DOD faced this same decision on hypersonic, low-orbit, nuclear weapons over 50 years ago and decided that it wasn’t worthwhile to pursue such weapons.

Back in the late 1960s Cold War days, both the U.S. and Soviet Union looked at something called the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System (FOBS), a nuclear weapons system that basically went into low-earth orbit and then de-orbited to deliver a nuclear warhead to a target. That was much like what China tested this past August.

The Soviets tested, built and ultimately deployed, 18 FOB systems beginning in 1969, but took them down in 1983 in favor of their ICBMs, which carried much larger warheads. The U.S. did not follow the Soviets, deciding from the start that nuclear armed FOBs carried no advantage over nuclear warheads on ICBMs.

Seven weeks ago, on September 20, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, during his speech to the Air Force Association’s annual conference, hinted there was new intelligence when he said China was developing the ability to launch “global strikes from space” against U.S. targets.


The Cipher Brief hosts private briefings with the world’s most experienced national and global security experts.  Become a member today.


In a meeting with reporters after the speech, Kendall spoke of “this old concept from the Cold War,” meaning FOBS, in describing his speech’s reference to China’s August tests. He described the approach as, “a system that basically goes into orbit and then de-orbits to a target…If you use that kind of approach, you don’t have to use a traditional ICBM trajectory. It’s a way to avoid defense systems and missile warning systems,” according to a story in breakingdefense.com.

China has conducted a number of successful tests of its DF-17, a medium-range ballistic missile
specifically designed to launch HGVs [hypersonic glide vehicles], according to the CRS October 19 report. “U.S. intelligence analysts assess that the missile has a range of approximately 1,000 to 1,500 miles and may now be deployed,” the CRS report says.

Milley was talking about the same thing when he spoke October 20, of the Chinese tests saying, “I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it’s very close to that. It has all of our attention.”What Milley did not mention was that while the Chinese hypersonic orbiting missile could evade U.S. tactical missile defense systems, the U.S. also does not have defensive systems to protect against Chinese and Russian strategic ICBMs.

In addition, what Milley did not mention was the extent to which the U.S. has already been working on its own hypersonic weapons, although, as the CRS report points out, “Most U.S. hypersonic weapons, in contrast to those in Russia and China, are not being designed for use with a nuclear warhead. As a result, U.S. hypersonic weapons will likely require greater accuracy and will be more technically challenging to develop than nuclear-armed Chinese and Russian systems.”

All three U.S. military services plus the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) have relevant programs as shown in the fiscal 2022 budget, which contains $3.8 billion for the hypersonic efforts.

The Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) program is developing a common glide vehicle with a booster system to create a common All Up Round (AUR) [essentially the warhead] for use by both the Navy and Army.  

The Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon program, armed with the AUR and paired with the Navy’s common glide vehicle booster system, is intended to have a range of over 1,725 miles.

U.S. Air Force is working on an Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) which is expected, according to its contractor, Lockheed Martin, to “provide rapid response by striking high-value, time-dependent targets in challenging locations, including enemy military bases and surface warships from stand-off distances.” It will use DARPA’s Tactical Boost Glide technology to develop an air-launched hypersonic glide vehicle prototype capable of travelling at average speeds of between Mach 6.5 and Mach 8 at a range of approximately 1,000 miles.

However, the July 28, first flight test of the ARRW launched from a B-52H had a motor failure after release from the aircraft. The Air Force announced on July 29, “While it did not meet all flight objectives, the test demonstrated several first-time events as the program continues to track toward fielding a hypersonic capability in the early 2020s.”


Go beyond the headlines with expert perspectives on today’s news with The Cipher Brief’s Daily Open-Source Podcast.  Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts.


On the other hand, a non-orbiting, cruise missile, Air Force/DARPA Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) vehicle, made a free flight the week of Sept. 20, a DARPA spokesman said, but most details of its capabilities are being withheld.

The Air Force has said it plans to pursue both the ARRW and the HAWC as initial and future hypersonic attack capabilities, respectively.

At last Wednesday’s Pentagon press conference, Spokesman John Kirby said, “There’s a limit to how far we can go speaking publicly about certain capabilities, but it’s in the budget. You can read it for yourself…Our own pursuit of hypersonic capabilities is real. It’s tangible and we are absolutely working towards being able to develop that capability. But I won’t get into the specifics of testing and where we are.”

He later added, “This is not a technology that is an alien to us, that we haven’t been thinking about for a while.”

While there obviously is a hypersonic, low-orbit, arms race going on among China, Russia and the U.S., so far the American effort, correctly, does not involve loading such new weapons with nuclear warheads. The world doesn’t need to place nuclear warheads in space.  In fact, Article IV of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty bars such weapons.

It reads, “States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.”

There will certainly be opportunities to look at how a new Outer Space Treaty might take shape in a world where the sky is no longer the limit.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief


Related Articles

Search

Close