The Hypersonic Supremacy Race: Offense, Defense, and Global Instability

The provided text offers a comprehensive analysis of the global hypersonic arms race as of mid-2025, highlighting a significant "hypersonic gap" where Russia and China hold a clear lead in operational offensive systems compared to the United States. It explains how these weapons redefine strategic stability by combining extreme speed with maneuverability, making existing defenses largely obsolete and compressing decision timelines to dangerously short periods. The text details the technical distinctions between Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGVs) and Hypersonic Cruise Missiles (HCMs), and outlines each nation's current arsenals and strategic priorities. Furthermore, it examines the United States' ambitious multi-layered defensive strategy, centered on a new space-based sensor network, while acknowledging a critical "window of vulnerability" before these defenses are fully operational. Finally, the analysis discusses how these weapons challenge traditional deterrence theory, creating payload ambiguity between conventional and nuclear attacks, and rendering existing arms control frameworks inadequate for the new, tripolar strategic competition.

Research done with the help of artificial intelligence, and presented by two AI-generated hosts.