EFE.- The United States Government confirmed on Wednesday that it is looking for hypersonic technology to counteract China’s advances in this area, following media reports indicating that Beijing tested a missile of this type last August.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby explained at a press conference that his country is working to achieve “hypersonic capabilities.”
“It is something tangible and we are working to be able to develop this capacity,” said Kirby, who did not want to go into detail on the subject.
According to the British newspaper Financial times, China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August.
The newspaper, which cited sources close to the test, explained that China launched a nuclear-capable missile in August that circled the Earth in low orbit “surprising the US intelligence services.”
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Later, Beijing denied having tested such a nuclear-capable missile, claiming that they were “routine tests” to verify aerospace reuse technologies.
However, in an interview with Bloomberg TV the head of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, corroborated this Wednesday that China recently tested a hypersonic weapon, in what is close to becoming a “Sputnik moment”, referring to the start of the space race between Washington and Moscow when Russia launched its first artificial satellite in 1957.
In this regard, the White House spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, was asked today, who pointed out in a press conference that what Milley has done has been to express the “concerns” that the US has about China’s modernization efforts in the military sphere. .
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Kirby stressed that the US is no stranger to hypersonic technology: “it is not something we have not been thinking about.”
And he clarified that at the same time that it seeks to possess this type of advance, the United States wants to improve its “defensive capabilities.”
He recalled that the country is “restless” about China’s military advances, which, he stressed, are coupled with a foreign and defense policy that “intimidates and exerts coercion on its neighboring nations.”
In that regard, Kirby added that “the Indo-Pacific continues to be a key national security objective in the United States.”
Currently, the US is engaged in an arms race with China and Russia in the field of hypersonic weapons, which due to their speed are more difficult to detect by missile defense systems.
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