Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbamb Here At a meeting in Arlington, Virginia in
Speaker 1: late one of the Pentagon's top officials told an audience
Speaker 1: of defense executives that the US is locked in a
Speaker 1: tight race with Russia and China to develop a new
Speaker 1: game changing weapon that could fly at many times the
Speaker 1: speed of sound and could be used to launch a
Speaker 1: deaf stating attack upon an enemy in a matter of minutes.
Speaker 1: The assemblage was told by Michael D. Griffin, the Department
Speaker 1: of Defense is under Secretary for Research and Engineering, that
Speaker 1: of all of the technological marvels that the Pentagon hoped
Speaker 1: to create, developing a hypersonic missile was his highest priority.
Speaker 1: It's not hard to understand why hypersonic missiles a technology
Speaker 1: that could be deployed as soon as the mid twenties.
Speaker 1: It sounds like the sort of exotic menace that a
Speaker 1: villain would dream up in a James Bond thriller. If
Speaker 1: we could get them to work, hypersonic missiles could have
Speaker 1: the ability to fly and maneuver its speeds between five
Speaker 1: and twenty five thousand kilometers per hour at a range
Speaker 1: of altitudes up to a hundred kilometers above Earth's surface
Speaker 1: for our non metric friends, that's about three to fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand miles per hour and up to sixty two miles
Speaker 1: high at the edge of orbital space. These capabilities could
Speaker 1: make it a nightmare to defend against them, because they
Speaker 1: would be moving so fast that it would be difficult
Speaker 1: to predict where they were about to strike until the
Speaker 1: last few minutes before impact. And because the missiles travel
Speaker 1: at such a high speed, their sheer kinetic energy alone
Speaker 1: would enable them to wreak destruction without carrying any conventional
Speaker 1: explosives or nuclear warheads. There are different potential methods of
Speaker 1: attaining that fantastic speed. One approach is to fire a
Speaker 1: conventional missile that would in turn release a smaller hypersonic
Speaker 1: glide vehicle, which would fly up into the upper layers
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere. Another approach would utilize a rocket or
Speaker 1: an advanced jet engine, such as a scram jet. Military
Speaker 1: vision areas have been contemplating hypersonic weapons for decades, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't until recently that the concept began to seem
Speaker 1: close to fruition due to any one specific breakthrough in technology,
Speaker 1: but rather due to a combination of progresses and political motivation.
Speaker 1: We spoke via email with Eon D. Boyd, a professor
Speaker 1: of airspace engineering at the University of Michigan. He explained,
Speaker 1: to develop a missile, you first have to show that
Speaker 1: the platform can fly. Emission of interest that was demonstrated
Speaker 1: in the US by scramjet powered demonstration flights. While a
Speaker 1: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA's to flight tests
Speaker 1: of their HTV to boost glide vehicle ended in failure,
Speaker 1: significant progress was demonstrated and important lessons learned. In an
Speaker 1: overlapping time period. The Pentagon demonstrated longer range hypersonic vehicle
Speaker 1: capabilities in their conventional Prompt Strike program. DARPA and the
Speaker 1: Air Force then partnered to mature many of the systems
Speaker 1: needed on a platform to make it into a weapon,
Speaker 1: as such as the guidance, navigation and control materials, structures,
Speaker 1: and rocket boosters. But the US wasn't alone and interest
Speaker 1: in developing high personic capabilities, Boyd said, China was watching
Speaker 1: and learning and at some point started investing in hypersonics
Speaker 1: since it became evident that significant progress was being made
Speaker 1: that at least in numbers of flight tests conducted appeared
Speaker 1: to show China outpacing US efforts, and in Russia, where
Speaker 1: they've worked on hypersonics for decades, like the US, they
Speaker 1: also seem to have had recent successes with test flights.
Speaker 1: In response to the Chinese and Russian progress, the Trump
Speaker 1: administration is pushing to develop hypersonic weapons as soon as possible,
Speaker 1: and as requesting funding of two point six billion dollars
Speaker 1: for hypersonic research by the Air Force, Navy, Army, and
Speaker 1: DARPA in its budget request for the financial year. The
Speaker 1: managing editor for National Security for the Center for Public
Speaker 1: Integrity one Our, Jeffrey Smith, reported in the New York
Speaker 1: Times magazine that spending on developing hypersonic weapons could rise
Speaker 1: to five billion dollars a year as the US pushes
Speaker 1: to develop a deployable hypersonic missile system in the next
Speaker 1: two to three years. Though hypersonic missiles could carry nuclear
Speaker 1: war heads, the missiles being developed by the US will
Speaker 1: only be equipped with conventional explosives, but they'll still be
Speaker 1: plenty fearsome. As Smith wrote in the Times quote, the
Speaker 1: missiles function like nearly invisible power drills that smash holes
Speaker 1: in their targets to catastrophic effect. They'll impact their targets
Speaker 1: with a force equivalent to three to four tons of TNT,
Speaker 1: according to Smith. In some ways, hypersonic missiles presented different
Speaker 1: and perhaps even scarier threat to peace than present nuclear arsenals,
Speaker 1: because they could enable a nation to launch a surprise
Speaker 1: attack and cripple an enemy's ability to retaliate, leaving it
Speaker 1: helpless against the threat of a nuclear attack. They'd be
Speaker 1: difficult to defend against for a number of reasons. Their speed,
Speaker 1: the fact that they fly in an area between aviation
Speaker 1: and space flight that we've never had to defend in,
Speaker 1: and they're maneuverable, a meaning that have to be tracked
Speaker 1: throughout their flight with accuracy. Boyd explained another issue quote
Speaker 1: this class of missiles is not covered by any currently
Speaker 1: valid weapons treaty. This poses a number of concerns, including
Speaker 1: the that the nations primarily involved, the US, China, and
Speaker 1: Russia do not have established protocols in place for the
Speaker 1: use of these systems. Finally, the potential for a hypersonic
Speaker 1: weapon to carry either a conventional warhead or a nuclear
Speaker 1: warhead means that a nation under threat wouldn't know whether
Speaker 1: a nuclear response should be considered. That all means that
Speaker 1: in the near future, hypersonic missiles could lead to a
Speaker 1: continuous atmosphere of hyper anxiety, in which nations might be
Speaker 1: afraid to not strike first, or to instantly launch a
Speaker 1: counter attack at the first hint of trouble, or at
Speaker 1: the very least, it could prompt nations to spend even
Speaker 1: more money on not just counter attacks, but defense measures.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Kaiger and produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler. Playing brain Stuff is a production of iHeart
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