CIA Says China Has Even More Hypersonics Than Russia
China is outpacing Russia in terms of developing its hypersonic missile capabilities and may already have the means to strike Washington’s forces in the Pacific, a senior defense official told US lawmakers on Friday. The US currently does not have its own fully operational hypersonic missile.
In testimony before the House of Representatives’ Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Paul Freisthler, chief scientist for science and technology with the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), compared the hypersonic capabilities of Washington’s two main competitors.
Freisthler stated that
“while both China and Russia have conducted numerous successful tests of hypersonic weapons and have likely fielded operational systems, China is leading Russia in both supporting infrastructure and numbers of systems.”
Over the past two decades, he continued, Beijing
“has dramatically advanced” its development of hypersonic missile technologies through
“intense and focused” investment, development, testing and deployment efforts. This applies to both conventional and nuclear missiles, he added.