How The U.S. Fell Behind In Hypersonic Technology

Hypersonic air travel is anything that travels at Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. The U.S. was once a leader in developing supersonic and hypersonic technology, but has taken "our foot off the gas," according to Mark Lewis, executive director of the National Defense Industrial Association's Emerging Technologies Institute.

Watch the video to find out more about how the U.S. fell behind Russia, China and possibly North Korea, and how we're spending billions to catch up.

Hypersonic air travel, for both military and commercial use, could be here within the decade.

The $770 billion National Defense Authorization Act signed into law Tuesday calls for investing billions into hypersonic research and development, making them a top priority for Washington. The next step is congressional approval to allocate the money for the technology to the Pentagon.

“If you are traveling at hypersonic speeds, you’re, you’re going more than a mile per second,” said Mark Lewis, executive director of the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies Institute. “That’s important for military applications. It could have commercial applications. It could also open up new, new ways of reaching space.”

Hypersonic is anything traveling above Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. That’s roughly 3,800 mph. At those speeds, commercial planes could travel from New York to London in under two hours.

Significant hypersonic research and development in recent years have highlighted its promising opportunity, but it’s also shed light on its destructive potential. According to Rand Corp., hypersonic technology creates a new class of threat that could change the nature of warfare.

“There truly is a sense of concern that we are in a race,” said Lewis, who is a former director at the Department of Defense. “We took our foot off the gas. … There are other nations, peer competitors, who are investing very, very heavily in hypersonics.”

China, Russia and now North Korea all claim to have developed and successfully tested hypersonic missiles. Unlike traditional ballistic missiles that follow a set trajectory after launch, hypersonic weapons are maneuverable in flight, incredibly fast and hard to detect.

The U.S. doesn’t have operational hypersonic missiles yet, but it’s a top priority for Washington. According to the Government Accountability Office, funding for hypersonic research increased by 740% between 2015 and 2020. The latest defense budget alone increased funding by 20%.

“It’s truly a bipartisan issue,” said Lewis.

The DOD is gathering data across multiple agencies, industry leaders and academia as it races to fast-track production on its first hypersonic missile by September 2022.

“We don’t want to just match them missile for missile, but introduce new capabilities of transportation capabilities, sensor capabilities. And I’m seeing that play out,” Lewis told CNBC.

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How The U.S. Fell Behind In Hypersonic Technology

[rhino]

How did the US fall behind in hypersonic technology?
Answer: By spending 5 trillion dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan that's how

[papajohnsuk]

You know what would make any flight "feel" hypersonic, if you didn't have to go through security & check in for 2-3 hours

[micesserono]

When you spend more than any other country and still lack behind, the money is not the problem.

[SvenPiper]

The fact that the U.S. is falling behind in more and more high-tech areas is due to rampant corruption. The U.S. has the world's most expensive health care system and one of the worst. The U.S. spends the most on defense, but other countries use their resources more efficiently.

[mrdoerp]

"Journalist" : what do you think?
Raytheon CEO : I think i need more money

[WinyPouh]

0:35 "Russia or China, possibly experimenting with hypersonic technology" Russia already have hypersonic rockets in service. Wake up.

[michelangelomissoni]

The United States 2022 defense budget was $768 billion, $53 billion more than the President requested. The armed forces of the USA has a larger budget than the other top 10 militaries on earth combined. Not to mention that most of these other great militaries are our direct military allies. Apart from China and Russia every top military spender is our friend. When speaking about China, it is us who surround them and their precious ports with dozens of military bases (ie Japan, South Korea, Guam, Philippines, Vietnam, ect.), not the other way around. And we haven't even mentioned the trillions the Pentagon admits cannot be accounted for over the last couple of decades....
Whats more is that USA has also been working on hypersonic technology for over 40 years, with billions invested in research at the end of the cold war. The USA is clearly way more ahead than they would like to admit, in order to maintain the tactical advantage of surprise.

Do not listen to the beating drums of war. They will begin to bang incessantly and consistently across all media channels. They will beg you to support a vast and unsustainable standing army and convince you with paranoia and fear. So we, the citizens of the wealthiest nation of history, continue to put up with crumbling roads, corrupted healthcare and a sweeping housing crisis. America is a nation of vast resources, it can absolutely afford universal healthcare and affordable homes. It's just about how we are allocating our immense wealth. We do not need to spend billions more on contracts for weapons we created in the 80's....
Long live the American people.

[ILDG]

Having an annual defence budget of $750 billion apparently isn't enough to satisfy the beast.

[nickhimaras]

I remember all the times in US History, since the 50s when the US allegedly "..fell behind.." in some defense technology or another. The first one was the nuclear "missile gap" with the Soviet Union in the Eisenhower presidency. It was indeed a huge gap...in favor of the US.
All these "falling behinds" are usually early attempts at an arms race in the particular technology, you know, huge defense spending increases.

[DanBurgaud]

Sadly, all those Nazi rocket scientists from WW2 are all dead, the poached Soviet rocket scientists from the cold war era are all retired, and USA could not poach Russian nor Chinese rocket scientists...

[npc]

I think we need to increase our military budget again next year because apparently, $768 billion isn’t enough.

[gpaje]

US has a bloated system, the fact we have the largest by far military budget yet can't compete with countries with far lower budgets means we need to get a hold of our costs and graft built into the defense industry. Throwing more money into hypersonic research is all they can do right now, but shouldn't be the case.

[ericp]

In other words, defense contractors want more money.

[wtf_usa]

So funny to see the CEO of Raytheon warning about "how far behind we are". So I guess 2023's military budgets will be $1T+, but we still won't have Health Care or shelter for the homeless.

[markvelber]

Not just hypersonic but in many’s things quite behind China and Russia.

[AbhaySingh-oszp]

See thats the point, unlike the post ww2 era, this time everyone has the resources, brilliance, ability and time to leap frog as well. US only succeeded when the rest of the world was distracted or had bigger issues. Now, its not the same.

[Deltanorth]

They fell behind hypersonic research but they have the largest military budget in the world? 😂😂 bunch of corrupt thieves in the pentagon

[toovexx]

With the amount of money we’re spending we have no excuse for falling behind.

[NebulaIsTaken]

>spends hundreds of billions of dollars on military

>still falling behind other nations spending a fraction of the money

[ChiefOfProtocol_ZW]

We can develop hypersonic weapons but not pass an audit at the DoD and still get more funding.