The goal is to “light a fire among the entire hypersonic industry” and “encourage the industry to pick up the pace,” said two executives from two defense companies invited to attend the meeting scheduled for Thursday. .
The United States has “a lot to catch up on very quickly,” said US Space Forces General David Thompson after recent hypersonic weapons tests by China and Russia surprised US national security officials and indicated the US is falling behind its main geopolitical rivals.
“We are not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in hypersonic programs,” Thompson said in a November speech at the Halifax International Security Forum.
The Pentagon says Austin will “make brief comments” at the beginning of next week’s meeting, but will be chaired by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks as “part of its regular, drumbeat engagements with the industry” to “explain ways to accelerate the development of advanced capabilities and new operational concepts.”
Top executives from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Leidos, Aerojet Rocketdyne, BAE Systems, L3Harris and about half a dozen other defense companies have been invited to attend.
Traveling at Mach 5 or faster, hypersonic weapons are difficult to detect, posing a challenge to missile defense systems. Hypersonic missiles can travel a much lower trajectory than high arc ballistic missiles, which are easily detected. They can also maneuver and evade missile defense systems.
The advances of China and Russia and recent failed tests have led the Pentagon to inject more urgency into the US program and increase the resources they devote to developing hypersonic weapons. The budget for FY22 committed $3.8 billion to hypersonic research, up from $3.2 billion the previous year.
While Russia and China are developing hypersonic weapons that can carry nuclear warheads, the US has focused their development on conventional warheads, which require a greater degree of accuracy and can be more technologically challenging to develop. While defense companies are typically responsible for manufacturing weapons and weapons systems, the US military is primarily responsible for testing and launching.
The meeting will be moderated by Heidi Shyu, Defense Secretary for Research and Engineering, who told reporters in January that all six branches of the US military are “pushing contractors very, very aggressively” in developing hypersonic weapons. Shyu also noted that “no aggressive schedule, especially if you push them hard, will go perfectly without any problems.”
Indeed, the US hypersonic industry has faced challenges and setbacks in recent months. In October, the Pentagon said a test of a hypersonic glider failed due to a problem with the missile propelling it to hypersonic speeds, and in April a hypersonic missile failed to separate from a B-52H Stratofortress bomber during a test at Edwards Air Force. base.
“We’ve decided that failure is bad,” Hyten said. “No, failure is part of the learning process. And if you want to get back up to speed, you better figure out how to get speed in [sic] and that means taking risks and that means learning from mistakes and that means failing quickly and acting quickly.”
Still, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall warned last week about “mirror imaging” China’s hypersonic development program, as the US and China have different goals.
“I think we need to look very closely at the targets we’re interested in and the most cost-effective way to go about them, and I think that’s still an open question,” Kendall told the Center for New American Security in a virtual discussion.
