Russia and China do not want an exchange of nuclear strikes more than the United States, the American edition of SpaceNews reports the statement of the former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Research and Development of the United States (under the administration of President Donald Trump) Michael Griffin.
According to him, at present, Moscow and Beijing have less developed conventional armed forces than Washington. On the other hand, the presence of hypersonic gliders gives Russia and China an advantage over the United States. “They can bring us down to their level with the right disruptive technology. Hypersonic weapons are just such a destructive technology, ”the former head of NASA (during the administration of George W. Bush) was frightened.
Griffin called the cost-to-cost ratio between Russia and China's cost of producing missiles that could destroy an American aircraft carrier terrifying. “They are launching a missile worth maybe several million dollars or even tens of millions of dollars, and two or three of them could destroy an aircraft carrier,” the former deputy defense minister said.
According to Griffin, in order to counter the Russian and Chinese threat, the United States should actively develop satellite constellations that allow tracking missile threats, and increase investments in the development of its own hypersonic weapons by an order of magnitude.
Thus, the former head of NASA reacted to a test carried out by China in July, presumably a system of partial-orbital bombing.
In a December 2019 column on Defense News, the former US Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Development wrote that the Soviet Union lost to the United States in the Cold War, because the latter preferred to use the principle of “money over blood” where possible.
In March 2018, Griffin announced that the neutron gun would become one of the most promising weapons in outer space in the 2020s.
