National Defense:
China has advanced its hypersonic weapons to the point where it could potentially deploy them on a large scale, a top U.S. military officer warned June 21.
Hypersonic missiles can travel at speeds of Mach 5 or faster and they pose a major challenge to existing missile defense systems, Pentagon officials have said.
To date, China has been developing high speed, long-range precision missiles on a “micro” scale, said Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“They haven’t mass deployed hypersonics or long-range [tactical] ballistic missiles” yet, he said during a panel discussion at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C. However, “what they have done is proven the technologies, and so they are able now to deploy those capabilities at a large scale” if they decide to move in that direction, he added.
