A recent announcement by U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin that it has secured a $694 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to produce a new hypersonic missile is the latest indication that the arms race among the world’s three major military powers the United States, China and Russia is gaining momentum.
Hypersonic weapons are missiles that travel at speeds of at least five times the speed of sound, or approximately 6,100 kilometers per hour, while retaining the ability to perform sharp maneuvers during flight within Earth’s atmosphere.
“What makes some of these new hypersonic weapons particularly challenging is the combination of speed, maneuverability and flight trajectory. This can make detection, continuous tracking and predicting the weapon’s position at the time of interception considerably more difficult,” said Eva Sula, a senior defense and security researcher at the London-based Baltic International Security Centre (BISC).
Lockheed Martin said that the production readiness of the missile, known as ARRW, makes it a critical military asset, providing an essential capability to counter emerging threats.
China and Russia, which have maintained what they describe as a “no-limits partnership” since early 2022, are among the main challenges facing Washington. Beijing possesses the world’s largest hypersonic weapons arsenal, largely due to its strategy of large-scale production. Russia, meanwhile, is ahead of the United States in operational deployment, having used hypersonic weapons in combat during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Analysts estimate that if current production trends continue, China and Russia could jointly possess an arsenal of 5,000 hypersonic weapons by 2035, with approximately 4,000 belonging to China.
“This is just one piece of the puzzle as the United States moves to rapidly expand its hypersonic capabilities, both defensive and offensive,” Grant Newsham, a senior research fellow at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy and a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Washington is making “surprisingly rapid progress,” particularly in offensive capabilities, he added, across the Air Force, Navy and Army.
The Pentagon plans to spend $37.9 billion on hypersonic weapons programs during fiscal years 2027–2031 as it seeks to narrow the gap with China and Russia.
The proposed funding includes $10.1 billion for the Army to field 4,500 intermediate-range hypersonic weapons, $2.1 billion for the Navy to procure 59 missiles, and substantial funding for the Air Force’s hypersonic programs, including ARRW and HACM.
China enjoys several advantages in the hypersonic arms race. First, it was among the earliest countries to develop and deploy this technology.
In 2020, China fielded what was described as the world’s first operational hypersonic weapons system, consisting of the DF-17 intermediate-range ballistic missile and the DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV).
“China’s development of conventional missiles, which were not restricted by the INF Treaty — the 1987 arms control agreement signed by the United States and the Soviet Union — gave it an advantage in developing intermediate-range ballistic missiles that can serve as delivery systems for hypersonic weapons,” John Van Oudenaren, a research analyst at Washington-based technology consultancy BluePath Labs, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Beijing also benefits from a broader and more diverse hypersonic weapons testing infrastructure than that available to the United States, he added.
China is also the only country reported to have successfully integrated a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) with a fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS). The system places a warhead into low Earth orbit (LEO) before de-orbiting it and directing it toward its target. Beijing conducted two tests in 2021 demonstrating this integration.
Although the hypersonic glide vehicle in the first test failed to hit its target, missing by approximately 39 kilometers, it successfully released a separate projectile while in flight.
The Pentagon was reportedly surprised by the development. No country had previously demonstrated the ability to release a payload from a vehicle traveling at hypersonic speeds without destroying the vehicle or destabilizing its flight trajectory. General Mark Milley, then chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the development as a “Sputnik moment.”
At the same time, China’s tests highlighted a potential vulnerability in U.S. missile defenses against attacks approaching from the south. American missile defense systems have traditionally been designed around the assumption that a Russian nuclear strike against the continental United States would follow the shortest route through the North Pole and the Arctic.
However, during China’s tests, hypersonic weapons reportedly traveled through low Earth orbit over Antarctica, where U.S. radar coverage is limited. A FOBS system can approach from unexpected trajectories because it does not follow the high, predictable parabolic paths associated with traditional intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Beijing denied testing hypersonic weapons. China’s Foreign Ministry claimed the tests involved technologies for reusable space vehicles intended to reduce the cost of space operations.
“They are lying. This is an integral part of China’s strategy,” Newsham said, adding that Beijing reports significantly lower military spending than its actual expenditure.
The Pentagon estimates that China’s actual defense spending is between 40 and 90 percent higher than the amount declared in its official budget.
Another Chinese advantage is its manufacturing capacity, reinforced by its de facto strategic partnership with Russia.
“Russia has a wartime economy, while China is a manufacturing powerhouse. Together, they can produce these missiles much faster than the United States,” Ali Javaheri, a senior emerging technology analyst at New York-based market intelligence company PitchBook, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Estimates suggest Russia produces approximately 80 hypersonic weapons annually, China around 370, while U.S. production remains in the single digits.
“The United States is very good at producing extremely advanced defense systems, such as the F-35 fighter jet, but not so good at producing mid-tier systems,” such as hypersonic weapons, Javaheri said.
He noted that following the end of the Cold War, America’s defense industrial base declined due to extensive industry consolidation and its separation from the civilian economy. Defense contractors increasingly concentrated on producing highly sophisticated, expensive platforms in relatively small quantities for the Pentagon.
As a result, the U.S. military acquired some of the world’s most advanced defense systems, but at the expense of mass-production capabilities and the ability to rapidly scale manufacturing.
American military planners are concerned that China’s expanding hypersonic arsenal could undermine Washington’s ability to intervene in a potential crisis over Taiwan. This is widely regarded as one of the most plausible scenarios that could bring the two superpowers into direct military confrontation.
China already possesses the world’s largest conventional missile force, but hypersonic weapons present additional challenges because of their speed, low-altitude flight within the atmosphere and ability to change trajectory in real time.
A classified Pentagon assessment known as Overmatch, first publicly reported by The New York Times in December 2025, revealed that simulations of a war over Taiwan showed Beijing using hypersonic weapons as part of a devastating campaign that disabled or destroyed advanced U.S. Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers.
Without the ability to neutralize China’s missile threat, American commanders could be forced to keep carrier strike groups outside the weapons’ range, estimated at approximately 4,000 kilometers for an intermediate-range missile.
Since most carrier-based fighter aircraft have a combat radius of between 800 and 1,300 kilometers, U.S. aircraft could be positioned too far away to conduct effective strikes or establish air superiority over the Taiwan Strait.
“This could make defending Taiwan significantly more costly for the United States, Taiwan and Japan, given the currently insufficient U.S. capabilities to defend against hypersonic missiles,” Newsham said.
“However, this does not give China an advantage that guarantees an easy victory, or necessarily victory at all. The United States and its allies still have numerous capabilities that could make things extremely difficult for China,” he added.
The United States has also deployed mobile missile-launching systems in Japan and the Philippines, which could strike China’s economic centers along its eastern coast, naval bases, airfields and command facilities.
The hypersonic arms race between the United States on one side and China and Russia on the other is expected to intensify as all three countries seek to expand their respective arsenals.
“Hypersonic weapons are becoming an increasingly important element of strategic competition,” Sula said.
“Nevertheless, I would caution against presenting them as a technological development that, on its own, will transform the way wars are fought. The experience of Ukraine has clearly demonstrated that military effectiveness increasingly depends on how different capabilities are combined and employed, rather than on the sophistication of a single weapon.”
