A newly released report (see attachment/link) by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) concludes that the United States “lacks the defenses needed to protect against a new breed of highly sophisticated hypersonic weapons from China and Russia. China and Russia are pursuing hypersonic weapons because their speed, altitude, and maneuverability, may defeat most defense systems; and, they may be used to improve long-range conventional and nuclear-strike capabilities.” “There are no existing countermeasures,” though the U.S. Defense Department is currently in the research, development and testing phase of an interceptor capability. But, point taken.
Russia publicly claimed earlier this year to have successfully tested a nuclear-capable, hypersonic missile that could evade adversary defenses. Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly stated that their Kinzhal flies ten times faster than the speed of sound, has a range of more than 1,250 miles, and can carry a nuclear, or conventional warhead – -capable of hitting ground and seaborne targets.”
The U.S. isn’t sitting still thankfully, with the Pentagon announcing this past April that it had contracted defense giant Lockheed Martin to “develop a hypersonic conventional strike weapon for the United States Air Force (USAF).
Additionally, the report notes that “Russia has made significant advancements in submarine technology and tactics to escape [evade] detection by U.S. forces.” And, “China is developing underwater acoustic systems that could coordinate swarm attacks — the use of large quantities of simple and expendable assets to overwhelm opponents — among vehicles and provide greater undersea awareness. Adversaries could achieve breakthroughs in anti-submarine warfare — such as artificial intelligence (AI) to locate U.S. submarines — or attack U.S. undersea infrastructure, which could cripple national communications capabilities.”
One other point of interest, the GAO warns that “future advances in AI, sensors, data analytics, and space-based platforms, could create an environment of “ubiquitous Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR),” where people and equipment can be tracked throughout the world in near real-time. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are developing multiple ISR platforms.”
Interesting that the GAO did not highlight the growing threat of autonomous systems — enhanced by AI — and the progress in miniature and micro drones, as well as the potential for drone swarms — on the ground, under the water, and in the air.
The adversary gets a vote — and, ‘he’ is not sitting still. Capability surprise, or a new Sputnik moment on the ‘battlefield,’ is a real concern and possibility. Does the U.S. and the Department of Defense agree with the GAO’s observations; and, do we have the right amount of resources and emphasis in these key areas — is another unanswered question. RCP, fortunascorner.com
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