Task force pushes for increased Pentagon focus on hypersonics
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A report released Thursday by an Atlantic Council task force finds the U.S. Defense Department must surge efforts to field its first generation of hypersonic weapons — and proposes a new layered strategy for how to best employ them.
The report, “The imperative for hypersonic strike weapons and counterhypersonic defenses,” contains 10 recommendations aimed at meeting the pacing challenge set by Russia and China in the development of hypersonic weapons that can travel at least five times the speed of sound. While many of the recommendations are aimed at focusing the Pentagon’s attention on the task, such as a call to appoint a “munitions czar” to oversee procurement and development of these weapons, two of the 10 concern what the report’s authors call “an integrated comprehensive layered defeat (ICLD) strategy of employment.”
If the U.S. can’t quickly integrate such weapons into its arsenal, it risks being without a credible deterrent against adversaries building up their own hypersonic stockpiles, said report co-author Whitney McNamara, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
“I think maybe our national strategic culture has messaged a real reticence to ever use nuclear weapons; we’re definitely not saber-rattling like Russia and China in that sense,” McNamara said. “And so I do think it’s compelling to be developing a weapon that’s very destructive, long range, and survivable for contested, congested environments — but one that we signal that we’re not as reticent to use as the next weapon.”
At the heart of this new ICLD strategy is organizing U.S. missile defense into four quadrants. One is the kinetic post-launch intercept weapons typically considered the core of missile defense; the report also adds “left-of-launch” kinetic and nonkinetic defeat mechanisms, as well as post-launch nonkinetic mechanisms. Hypersonic weapons in the hands of U.S. adversaries dramatically shorten the response timeframe and make traditional long-range strike capabilities “simply insufficient,” the report finds. In American hands, these weapons can expand options for defeating enemy systems before they threaten the homeland, it adds.
A layered defense framework “should be an underpinning of both homeland defense (such as the proposed ‘Golden Dome’ missile shield) and theater warfighting strategies, leveraging hypersonic strike as a critical left-of-launch enabler to disrupt and destroy adversary systems before they can be used while defeating every other element of the adversary kill chain through the integration of kinetic and nonkinetic capabilities,” the report reads.
Retired Gen. James McConville, former chief of staff of the Army and a member of the Atlantic Council’s Hypersonics Capability Task Force, cited the Trump administration’s proposed Golden Dome and recent missile barrages on Israel as examples of the growing understanding of the need for such a layered-defense concept.
“We start thinking about, how do we stop something like that when that attack is that much bigger?” he said. “It becomes a challenge of bringing a whole bunch of sensors together.”
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Former Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and former Army Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy, the task force co-chairs, spoke to the value of appointing a program manager for hypersonic weapons, reporting to the deputy secretary of defense — who would, in the report’s recommendation, work closely with Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, the already-appointed czar for Golden Dome.
“It creates a tremendous amount of energy,” McCarthy said, citing the effectiveness of working groups launched by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates to fast-track urgent needs, like blast-proof vehicles during the war in Iraq.
James proposed that targeted expertise and working groups could similarly be leveraged to finally field the first U.S. hypersonic weapons, after about a quarter-century of investment and development. She said one way to organize this could be Space Force’s concept of “mission deltas,” which align technical experts, operational personnel and acquisition specialists to address barriers to fielding.
The Air Force, Army and Navy are all close to fielding their first hypersonic weapons. The Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile and Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon have been troubled by delays, but are now reportedly on track for production in the next two years. The Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, named Dark Eagle earlier this year, is nearing fielding, though McCarthy alluded to the unsustainably high $41 million per round cost assessed in 2023. The Navy’s sea-based Conventional Prompt Strike missile is targeting 2027 for fielding.
Costs must come down, but first these systems have to reach the services, James said.
“I would get busy right away, doing everything possible to field at reasonable scale,” she said. “You need to get something in the arsenal as soon as possible, in my opinion.”
Since 2023, Russia has launched Kinzhal, Zircon and Oreshnik hypersonic missiles in its war against Ukraine; the report also mentions the Tsirkon ship-launched hypersonic strike missile and the Avangard intercontinental ballistic missile, which has a hypersonic glide vehicle and can carry a nuclear warhead. China has shown the world a range of hypersonic weapons in military parades and other strategic displays.
Despite this, McNamara suggested the advantages these countries have over the U.S. may still be “narrow.” She noted that air capacity provided by the West has proven capable of countering Russian missiles – Ukraine has used U.S.-made Patriot missiles to shoot down Kinzhals, for instance — and said investment in deterrence will help ensure the advantage does not grow.
“How can we almost future-proof our sensing architecture,” she said, “to make sure that it can be resilient to future investment [from] Russia and China?”
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