US-China-Russia Hypersonic Weapons Race Accelerates

American defense contractor Lockheed Martin’s recent announcement that it had been awarded a $694 million contract by the US Air Force to produce a new air-launched hypersonic missile is the latest sign of an accelerating tripartite arms race involving the US, China, and Russia.

A hypersonic missile is a weapon able to move at speeds exceeding Mach 5 — more than five times the speed of sound or roughly 6,100 kilometers per hour — while maintaining the ability to perform sharp, sustained maneuvers within the Earth’s atmosphere.

“What makes certain newer hypersonic weapons particularly challenging is the combination of speed, maneuverability, and flight trajectory, which can complicate detection, continuous tracking and the prediction of where the weapon will be at the point of interception,” Eva Sula, a senior fellow for defense and security at the London-headquartered Baltic International Security Center (BISC), said in an interview.

China and Russia, which have had a “no limits partnership” since early 2022, are foremost among those threats. Beijing has the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal, driven by a high-volume manufacturing strategy. Russia leads the US in operational fielding of hypersonic weapons, having used them in combat during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Analysts say that if current production trends hold, by 2035 China and Russia will field a joint hypersonic weapons arsenal of 5,000 — with Beijing accounting for 4,000.

“It’s one piece of the puzzle as the US scrambles — with some success — to rapidly build up its hypersonic capabilities, both defensive and offensive,” Grant Newsham, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington and retired Marines colonel, told RFE/RL. Washington “is making surprisingly rapid progress, particularly on the offensive end — and that includes the Air Force, Navy, and Army,” he added.

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