US, UK working on defense against Russian, Chinese hypersonic missiles
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The United States and the United Kingdom are working on possessing arms capable of deterring Russia and China's arms amid concerns over Moscow and Beijing's capabilities.
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Russia’s Avangard hypersonic missile system (TASS)
Arms manufacturing companies from the United States and the United Kingdom have been working together to create defense systems that would be able to counter Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles, The Telegraph reported on Sunday.
Though the project is only "in its infancy" in the United States, British company Cohort, in particular, has been developing technologies to destroy projectiles moving five times faster than the speed of sound, Andy Tomis, the head of the firm, told the media outlet.
"Being able to develop convincing countermeasures against them is a really important step forward. It's a real challenge. There's no doubt about that," the British newspaper quoted Tomis as saying.
US weapons manufacturer Raytheon Missiles and Defense is planning on prioritizing the tracking of missiles from space via satellites, the company's chief, Wes Kremer, told The Telegraph.
Kremer went on to explain that the weak point of any missile is its heat dissipation system, given the relative ease it requires to be damaged.
However, defense against hypersonic weapons is only "in its infancy" in the United States, with only one project under development in the meantime, the Raytheon chief was quoted as saying, meaning it could be a while before Washington possesses such capabilities.
The United States, in light of mounting concerns that China and Russia have had more success manufacturing and developing their own homemade hypersonic weapons, announced last week that Washington recently successfully launched two Lockheed Martin hypersonic missiles.
The Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) booster was successfully tested on Tuesday off the coast of California, the US Air Force said.
The latest time period has seen the US conduct successful hypersonic weapons tests in a change from its usual failures, raising questions about cost and increasing concerns that Washington has been failing in what is now dubbed a superpower arms race.
Lockheed Martin handed over its first operational Multiple Rocket Launch System (MLRS) to the US Army, the company announced just a day ago in a press release.
