Dear Members and Friends,
The House Armed Services Committee of the United States Congress held a posture hearing on the North American continent with General Gregory M. Guillot, Commander NORTHCOM/NORAD, General Laura J. Richardson, Commander SOUTHCOM, and Rebecca Zimmerman, Performing the Duties of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs on Tuesday, March 12th. Defense against hypersonic missile defense threats of the United States was addressed.
“Hypersonics are probably the most destabilizing weapon that we face now, and one of the prime reasons is a shortened detection time and the fact that they don’t follow a traditional ballistic track means that they’re very unpredictable and the area of uncertainty is huge, based on their speed and their maneuverability. That’s what makes it such a challenge, not only to detect, but also to track and eventually to defeat them.”
“The unpredictable nature of [hypersonics’] maneuvering. Even with an ICBM, if it was 30 minutes, we could quickly figure out where it’s going, into a very small circle of error probability. However, with hypersonics, not only is it faster giving less time to detect, but it can also fly lower which gives our sensors problems, and then that maneuverability means that a typical threat warning could be something as vague as western united states as opposed to a particular city.”
-General Gregory Guillot, Commander NORAD NORTHCOM
Hypersonics pose a major challenge to our ability to identify inbound threats. In your experience, are we providing enough resources for reactive hypersonic threat prevention? – Rep. Terri Sewell (Alabama’s 7th congressional district)
“I share your assessment on hypersonics; I think that they’re probably the most technologically challenging threat that we’re facing, as well as the most destabilizing because, where they operate between established norms and weapons, specifically for NORAD and NORTHCOM, because both commands have roles with hypersonics. I’m comfortable with the trajectory that we’re on to build systems that can detect and track. We have some capability today, but as the threat advances we need to advance. And so, staying on track without over-the horizon radar and some space based systems, which will give us hypersonic detect and track capability, will be essential here in the coming years.”
Do we have enough resources supporting next-generation hypersonic technology? – Rep. Terri Sewell (Alabama’s 7th congressional district)
“We need to double the efforts and, like I said, we can detect what we have today but that’s not where our adversaries will be in just a couple short years. And that’s on the defensive part. Obviously not directly my realm, but to deter keeping pace on the offensive side is important, and I know that my fellow combatant commanders are looking at that as well. Also had some very good discussions with the missile defense agency about some of the systems that they’re developing, both in the future as well as acting current systems today, to be able to defeat hypersonics.”
The Biden Administration has requested a paltry $182 million for hypersonic glide phase interceptor in the FY 2025 budget as compared to the offensive budget which has been 10 times as much per year over the last five years, and accounting for nine offensive hypersonic development programs. This does not support the intent of Congress expressed in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requirement for a dedicated hypersonic defense capability. The NDAA requires an initial operational capability with 12 defensive hypersonic glide interceptors operational “no later than December 31, 2029”. The Department of Defense is clearly not resourcing MDA sufficiently to make this happen by 2029. The United States has no track record of success when it comes to hypersonic testing, as stated by Gen. John Hyten at the Hypersonic Missile Defense Forum on February 2, 2024.
“China has hypersonic tested 200 times in the last, hundreds of times in the last five years. We’ve tested nine. They’re also developing and testing potentially destabilizing new intercontinental range systems that include hypersonic as well as fractional and multiple orbital bombardment systems that could threaten an unwarranted preemptive attack in the United States. Therefore, the recommendations include developing and fielding homeland integrated air and missile defense that can deter and defeat coercive attacks by Russia and China, and determine the capabilities needed to stay ahead of the North Korean threat.”
-General (ret.) John Hyten, Hypersonic Defense Forum, February 2nd, 2024
“So how we, in regional defense for Guam that we’re spending $8 billion on architecture, that we have a different rule set, is INDOPACOM in charge of that, that we have to have hypersonic defenses? Why would you invest that kind of money without having hypersonic defense? And why is that in 29, maybe getting that down in 27? Why are there two different policies? I think Guam is US homeland, is it not? So what’s going on here? We got different rules for outside of the United States?”
-Mr. Riki Ellison, Hypersonic Defense Forum, February 2nd, 2024
The United States public requires a Hypersonic Glide Defense now to defend the United States homeland.
