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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff.

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Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbamb Here At a meeting in Arlington, Virginia in

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Speaker 1: late one of the Pentagon's top officials told an audience

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Speaker 1: of defense executives that the US is locked in a

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Speaker 1: tight race with Russia and China to develop a new

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Speaker 1: game changing weapon that could fly at many times the

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Speaker 1: speed of sound and could be used to launch a

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Speaker 1: deaf stating attack upon an enemy in a matter of minutes.

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Speaker 1: The assemblage was told by Michael D. Griffin, the Department

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Speaker 1: of Defense is under Secretary for Research and Engineering, that

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Speaker 1: of all of the technological marvels that the Pentagon hoped

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Speaker 1: to create, developing a hypersonic missile was his highest priority.

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Speaker 1: It's not hard to understand why hypersonic missiles a technology

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Speaker 1: that could be deployed as soon as the mid twenties.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like the sort of exotic menace that a

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Speaker 1: villain would dream up in a James Bond thriller. If

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Speaker 1: we could get them to work, hypersonic missiles could have

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Speaker 1: the ability to fly and maneuver its speeds between five

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Speaker 1: and twenty five thousand kilometers per hour at a range

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Speaker 1: of altitudes up to a hundred kilometers above Earth's surface

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Speaker 1: for our non metric friends, that's about three to fifteen

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Speaker 1: thousand miles per hour and up to sixty two miles

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Speaker 1: high at the edge of orbital space. These capabilities could

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Speaker 1: make it a nightmare to defend against them, because they

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Speaker 1: would be moving so fast that it would be difficult

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Speaker 1: to predict where they were about to strike until the

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Speaker 1: last few minutes before impact. And because the missiles travel

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Speaker 1: at such a high speed, their sheer kinetic energy alone

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Speaker 1: would enable them to wreak destruction without carrying any conventional

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Speaker 1: explosives or nuclear warheads. There are different potential methods of

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Speaker 1: attaining that fantastic speed. One approach is to fire a

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Speaker 1: conventional missile that would in turn release a smaller hypersonic

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Speaker 1: glide vehicle, which would fly up into the upper layers

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Speaker 1: of the atmosphere. Another approach would utilize a rocket or

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Speaker 1: an advanced jet engine, such as a scram jet. Military

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Speaker 1: vision areas have been contemplating hypersonic weapons for decades, but

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Speaker 1: it wasn't until recently that the concept began to seem

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Speaker 1: close to fruition due to any one specific breakthrough in technology,

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Speaker 1: but rather due to a combination of progresses and political motivation.

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Speaker 1: We spoke via email with Eon D. Boyd, a professor

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Speaker 1: of airspace engineering at the University of Michigan. He explained,

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Speaker 1: to develop a missile, you first have to show that

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Speaker 1: the platform can fly. Emission of interest that was demonstrated

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Speaker 1: in the US by scramjet powered demonstration flights. While a

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Speaker 1: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA's to flight tests

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Speaker 1: of their HTV to boost glide vehicle ended in failure,

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Speaker 1: significant progress was demonstrated and important lessons learned. In an

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Speaker 1: overlapping time period. The Pentagon demonstrated longer range hypersonic vehicle

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Speaker 1: capabilities in their conventional Prompt Strike program. DARPA and the

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Speaker 1: Air Force then partnered to mature many of the systems

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Speaker 1: needed on a platform to make it into a weapon,

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Speaker 1: as such as the guidance, navigation and control materials, structures,

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Speaker 1: and rocket boosters. But the US wasn't alone and interest

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Speaker 1: in developing high personic capabilities, Boyd said, China was watching

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Speaker 1: and learning and at some point started investing in hypersonics

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Speaker 1: since it became evident that significant progress was being made

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Speaker 1: that at least in numbers of flight tests conducted appeared

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Speaker 1: to show China outpacing US efforts, and in Russia, where

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Speaker 1: they've worked on hypersonics for decades, like the US, they

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Speaker 1: also seem to have had recent successes with test flights.

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Speaker 1: In response to the Chinese and Russian progress, the Trump

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Speaker 1: administration is pushing to develop hypersonic weapons as soon as possible,

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Speaker 1: and as requesting funding of two point six billion dollars

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Speaker 1: for hypersonic research by the Air Force, Navy, Army, and

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Speaker 1: DARPA in its budget request for the financial year. The

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Speaker 1: managing editor for National Security for the Center for Public

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Speaker 1: Integrity one Our, Jeffrey Smith, reported in the New York

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Speaker 1: Times magazine that spending on developing hypersonic weapons could rise

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Speaker 1: to five billion dollars a year as the US pushes

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Speaker 1: to develop a deployable hypersonic missile system in the next

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Speaker 1: two to three years. Though hypersonic missiles could carry nuclear

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Speaker 1: war heads, the missiles being developed by the US will

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Speaker 1: only be equipped with conventional explosives, but they'll still be

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Speaker 1: plenty fearsome. As Smith wrote in the Times quote, the

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Speaker 1: missiles function like nearly invisible power drills that smash holes

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Speaker 1: in their targets to catastrophic effect. They'll impact their targets

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Speaker 1: with a force equivalent to three to four tons of TNT,

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Speaker 1: according to Smith. In some ways, hypersonic missiles presented different

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Speaker 1: and perhaps even scarier threat to peace than present nuclear arsenals,

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Speaker 1: because they could enable a nation to launch a surprise

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Speaker 1: attack and cripple an enemy's ability to retaliate, leaving it

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Speaker 1: helpless against the threat of a nuclear attack. They'd be

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Speaker 1: difficult to defend against for a number of reasons. Their speed,

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Speaker 1: the fact that they fly in an area between aviation

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Speaker 1: and space flight that we've never had to defend in,

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Speaker 1: and they're maneuverable, a meaning that have to be tracked

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Speaker 1: throughout their flight with accuracy. Boyd explained another issue quote

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Speaker 1: this class of missiles is not covered by any currently

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Speaker 1: valid weapons treaty. This poses a number of concerns, including

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Speaker 1: the that the nations primarily involved, the US, China, and

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Speaker 1: Russia do not have established protocols in place for the

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Speaker 1: use of these systems. Finally, the potential for a hypersonic

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Speaker 1: weapon to carry either a conventional warhead or a nuclear

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Speaker 1: warhead means that a nation under threat wouldn't know whether

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Speaker 1: a nuclear response should be considered. That all means that

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Speaker 1: in the near future, hypersonic missiles could lead to a

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Speaker 1: continuous atmosphere of hyper anxiety, in which nations might be

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Speaker 1: afraid to not strike first, or to instantly launch a

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Speaker 1: counter attack at the first hint of trouble, or at

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Speaker 1: the very least, it could prompt nations to spend even

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Speaker 1: more money on not just counter attacks, but defense measures.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Kaiger and produced

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Speaker 1: by Tyler. Playing brain Stuff is a production of iHeart

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Speaker 1: Radio's How Stuff Works. For more in this and lots

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Speaker 1: of other military topics, visit our home planet, how stuff

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