“They launched a long-range missile,” said General John Hyten, outgoing Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. CBS News. “It went around the world, dropped a hypersonic vehicle all the way to China, impacted a target in China.”
When asked if the missile hit its target, Hyten said: “close enough”.
Hyten, who previously called the speed of China’s military’s capacity development “astonishing,” warned that it might one day be capable of launching a surprise nuclear attack on the United States.
“Why did they build all this capability?” Hyten said. “They look like a first-time weapon. That’s what those weapons look like to me.”
Test revelations come midway increased tension over Taiwan as China seeks to expand its weapons capabilities. The Pentagon warned in a report released earlier this month that China is rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal and could have 1,000 nuclear warheads by the end of the decade.
According to the latest data from the US State Department, the US currently has 3,750 nuclear warheads in stockpile, making it smaller than China’s nuclear stockpile.
China has refuse it tested hypersonic weapons.
In October, Financial Times China has tested a hypersonic missile-launched vehicle in low-Earth orbit that is theoretically capable of evading US missile defense systems. The pace at which the Chinese have developed the system has surprised US national security officials.
As China and Russia are developing their own versions of hypersonic missiles, the Pentagon has made the development of hypersonic weapons one of its top priorities. A US hypersonic missile test failed last month but the Pentagon insists it is still on track to deliver offensive hypersonic weapons in the early 2020s.
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