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PORTLAND, Maine – Falling behind Russia The US Navy is in a rush to make its maiden voyage in the development of hypersonic weapons with a warship that will begin as soon as next year.

competing with the USA Russia and Chinese to develop these weapons that move at ballistic missile speed but are difficult to hit due to their maneuverability.

The Russian military claimed that on both Saturday and Sunday it had already deployed hypersonic missiles and deployed them against targets in the United States. Ukraine marking the first use of the weapon in combat. The Pentagon could not confirm that a hypersonic weapon was used in the attacks.

The US military is accelerating development to catch up.

The US weapon would launch like a ballistic missile, releasing a hypersonic glide vehicle that would reach speeds seven to eight times the speed of sound before hitting the target.

In Maine, General Dynamics subsidiary Bath Iron Works began engineering and design work on the modifications needed to build the weapon system on three Zumwalt-class destroyers.

The Navy said work will begin at an as yet undisclosed shipyard within the fiscal year that begins October 2023.

Hypersonic weapons are defined as anything that moves beyond Mach 5 or five times faster than the speed of sound. That’s about 3,800 mph (6,100 km/h). Intercontinental ballistic missiles far exceed this threshold, but proceed in a predictable path, making it possible to intercept them.

New weapons are maneuverable.

Russia It says it has ballistic missiles capable of deploying hypersonic glide vehicles and a hypersonic cruise missile.

U.S. President and Tennessee Democrat U.S. Representative Jim Cooper said the U.S., with only a tiny fraction of the 10,000 people working on the program in the 1980s, was “just struggling to keep up” because it didn’t invest in new technology. a subcommittee monitoring the program

“If we want to pursue companionship, we will need to support that effort with more money, time and talent than we do now,” he said.

Russian invasion Ukraine The Pentagon is acting as the backdrop, as it publishes its budget proposal later this month, which lays out its targets for hypersonic and other weapons systems.

Three stealthy Zumwalt-class destroyers to be equipped with new weapons have plenty of room to house them, thanks to a design flaw that in this case worked to the Navy’s advantage.

The ships are built around a weapons system that must use GPS-guided, rocket-assisted projectiles to hit targets 90 miles (145 kilometers) away. But these shells proved too expensive, and the Navy canceled the system, leaving each of the ships with a useless loading system and a pair of 155mm guns hidden in angular turrets.

Defense analyst Bryan Clark said that retrofitting all three ships would likely cost more than $1 billion, but would add a new capability to the tech-laden, electric-propelled ships, which would cost the Navy $23.5 billion. Hudson Institute.

“Engineering isn’t that hard. It will just take time and money to make it happen,” Clark said.

The Navy said it plans to deploy weapons on destroyers in FY 2025 and on Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines in FY 2028.

The destroyers would be stationed in the Pacific Ocean, where they would act as a deterrent. ChineseShould it be encouraged? Russia‘s attack Ukraine and consider attacking Taiwan, Clark said.

The US focus on hypersonic weapons represents a pivot after hesitating in the past due to technological hurdles. Meanwhile, the enemies continued research and development.

Russia In late December, he fired a salvo of Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles, heralding the completion of weapons tests.

However Russia Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, said it may be overstating the ability of such superweapons to compensate for weakness in other areas.

For now, Russia he doesn’t have most of the weapons, and it’s unclear how effective they are, he said.