The U.S. is pushing to deploy hypersonic missiles across its service branches to maintain its military edge on rivals including Russia and China.
Military officials see hypersonic technology as vital to maintaining America's edge against Russia and China. In Asia particularly, the U.S. is keen to fit its vessels with hypersonic missiles. The South China Sea and Taiwan Strait are key flashpoints, where American and Chinese warships and aircraft have tense encounters over Beijing's territorial claims.
Hypersonic missiles are part of a wider strategy to expand the size of the U.S. Navy and put less emphasis on large, manned vessels like aircraft carriers, to smaller, faster, heavily-armed vessels, some of which will eventually be unmanned. O'Brien is pushing for a 500-ship Navy by 2045, up from the current target of 355 manned ships by 2030. This so-called"Battleforce 2045" project was first announced by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.Wednesday he remains skeptical about the Battleforce 2045 proposal.
"Math is a very stubborn thing," Modly said."If you are going to increase the size of the fleet from 275 to 355, or 500, and you aren't going to increase the Navy's top line to pay for it, you've merely created a mathematical challenge for yourself that cannot be solved." The Virginia-class submarine USS Vermont transits the Thames River while conducting routine operations in Groton, Connecticut, on October 15, 2020.
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