nationalinterest | No country has ever possessed a reliable defense against a long-range
strategic weapon. Instead, nuclear states count on the threat of atomic
counterattack -- "mutual assured destruction" is the Cold War term --
in order to deter a nuclear attack.
Avangard could become just another strategic weapon that that United
States counters with strategic weapons of its own. "Our response would
be our deterrent force, which would be the triad and the nuclear
capabilities that we have to respond to such a threat," Hyten said.
Hypersonic weapons might be more useful, and more effective, if they
do not carry nuclear warheads. In July 2018, Michael Griffin, the U.S.
Defense Department's undersecretary of defense for research and
engineering, warned about the "tactical capability that these sorts of weapons bring to theater conflicts or regional conflicts."
Griffin characterized hypersonic vehicles as "very quick response,
high speed, highly maneuverable, difficult to find and track and kill."
With Avangard reportedly combat-ready, Russia competes with China to
be the first country to deploy a hypersonic weapon. China in October
2019 publicly debuted its DF-17 hypersonic surface-to-surface missile
during a military parade in Beijing.
It’s unclear whether the DF-17 actually is operational. It’s also
unclear how many DF-17s China possesses and how it plans to use the
missiles during wartime. Most importantly, it’s not obvious that China
has built a sensor network capable of selecting targets for the DF-17.
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