How will US respond to China’s hypersonic threat?

China’s hypersonic vehicle test showed it can deliver a nuclear weapon from space in violation of its 1967 Outer Space Treaty commitments

China tested a hypersonic glide vehicle in August launched from an orbiting spacecraft, qualifying the Chinese vehicle as a Fractional Orbit Bombardment (FOB) System.

The launch was confirmed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who called it “very close to a Sputnik moment.” He also said the launch was “very concerning.”

FOBs are nothing new. But what makes the Chinese system different is that instead of launching a nuclear warhead mounted on a small rocket in space orbit against a ground target, China has shown it can launch a hypersonic glide vehicle with a nuclear warhead from space.

Russia already has an ICBM hypersonic glide vehicle called Avangard, which is now deployed. Unlike the Chinese FOB, Avangard sits atop a missile launched from an underground silo. When within range of its target, it releases the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle.

It is not currently an orbital vehicle or technically a fractional orbital vehicle. It is said to carry a 2 megaton, relatively small, nuclear warhead.

Going back in time, Russia built at least three different FOB platforms starting in 1960. One of them, called the R-36O, was first flight-tested in 1965. After 20 tests and many problems, the first Russian FOBs were deployed in 1971 in Kazakhstan, then part of the USSR, but were not equipped with nuclear warheads until the following year.

The R-36O was a fractional orbit system and was not intended to circle the earth entirely. For example, it might be launched from Russia, head down over the South Pole, and then head north to the United States following a partial orbiting path. In range of its target, it would launch a small rocket from space with a nuclear warhead.

Initially, the reason for FOBs for Russia was to overcome US anti-ballistic missile systems (ABMs). At the time of development, the US had only one such system called Sentinel (later called Safeguard), a system that would come to have 480 Spartan and 192 Sprint missiles, but Russia’s reasoning is that a FOB could be launched either over the North or South poles.

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