Hypersonic Weapons in Limbo: A Winding Road from Bush to Biden
The path to operational hypersonic weapons in the United States has been neither swift nor straight. What began as a promising technological frontier during the Bush administration has evolved into a critical national security imperative, shaped by shifting strategic priorities, bureaucratic challenges, and the relentless advance of peer competitors.
Today, as American hypersonic systems finally approach deployment, the question is no longer whether the United States can develop these game-changing weapons, but whether it can deploy them fast enough to maintain strategic deterrence in an increasingly contested world.
The Early Vision: Bush Era Innovation and the Land War Interruption
The story of American hypersonic weapons begins during a period of technological optimism and strategic foresight. Between 2004 and 2008, Dr. Mark J. Lewis served as Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force, working alongside Secretary Michael Wynne and General “Buzz” Mosely to champion revolutionary advances in aerospace technology. Their vision extended far beyond conventional warfare, encompassing a transformation of airpower built around emerging platforms like the F-22 Raptor and the anticipated global F-35 enterprise.
Dr. Lewis, already recognized for his expertise in hypersonics, understood the transformative potential of weapons that could travel at speeds exceeding Mach 5 while maintaining unpredictable flight paths. Together with Air Force Chief of Staff General T. Michael Moseley, the leadership team pushed aggressively for capabilities that would ensure American dominance in high-end warfare scenarios. Their approach was comprehensive, integrating advanced propulsion systems, long-range strike capabilities, and hypersonic vehicles into a coherent vision of future air and space power.
However, the decision to commit American forces to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fundamentally altered defense priorities. This strategic pivot had profound consequences for emerging technologies like hypersonics, which suddenly found themselves competing with urgent operational needs rather than receiving priority development funding.
The watershed moment came in 2008 with the dismissal of Secretary Wynne and the broader reshuffling of Air Force leadership. This was an historic moment, which the late Australian military leader and strategist Jim Molan underscored in his book in the following manner:
“The U.S. is surfacing from decades of war in the Middle East with worn-out equipment, understandably having allocated a lot of its funding to ‘today’s wars’ rather than investing in the future. During the Iraq War, for instance, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates wanted more drones to carry on the day-to-day fight in Iraq and found himself in conflict with the U.S. Air Force, which wanted to continue building the fighters and bombers that it thought would be needed in the future.
“Gates sacked the chief of the U.S. Air Force and restricted the production of aircraft such as the stealth F-22 fighter and the B-21 bomber, in order to build the drones and other aircraft he needed.
“The result was that only a limited number of the extraordinary F-22s were built and the B-21 is still not in production. The impact of diverted spending and focus will be felt for a long time to come.
“The likely war with China, if it is ever fought by weapons of this type, is going to be fought by a very small number of modern stealth fighters, but mainly by U.S. fighters and bombers that are 20 to 30 years old.
“The result of all this is that the U.S. will not be able to marshal sufficient military power to deter China in the Western Pacific, possibly for years.” (Jim Molan. Danger On Our Doorstep (pp. 106-107). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.)
The consequences of this shift extended far beyond personnel changes. The production of the F-22 Raptor was capped at just 187 aircraft, well below the numbers originally envisioned for maintaining air superiority against peer competitors. The B-21 bomber program faced delays and budget constraints. Most critically for this analysis, hypersonic research programs that had been gaining momentum suddenly faced funding cuts and organizational disruption. The scientific and advocacy networks that had been building around hypersonic technologies found themselves marginalized as attention shifted to ground war needs on battlefields far from the United States and not connected in any real way to the peer competitors postured to displace the liberal democratic order.
This period established a pattern that would persist for over a decade: American hypersonic development would consistently be subordinated to more immediate strategic priorities, allowing competitors to gain crucial advantages in both technology development and operational deployment.
The Obama Years: Strategic Pivot Meets Practical Constraints
President Obama’s election in 2008 brought renewed strategic thinking about America’s global posture, culminating in the announced “Pivot to Asia” or “Rebalance to Asia and the Pacific” beginning in 2011. This strategic reorientation explicitly recognized China’s rising power and the growing importance of East Asia to American interests. On paper, the pivot represented exactly the kind of strategic thinking that should have prioritized advanced weapons systems like hypersonics, which are particularly valuable in the vast distances and contested environments of the Pacific theater.
In practice, however, the Obama administration prioritized military commitments that consumed both attention and resources. Despite rhetorical emphasis on the Pacific rebalance, the main U.S. military effort remained focused on Afghanistan and the broader Middle East. Large-scale troop deployments, counterinsurgency operations, and the complex process of winding down the Iraq War continued to drive defense spending and strategic attention.
This tension between stated priorities and operational realities had direct consequences for hypersonic development. While some research continued in national laboratories and defense contractors, there was neither significant funding increases nor urgent organizational pressure to accelerate development. The weapons that are now seen as crucial for modern high-end conflict in the Pacific, systems capable of defeating advanced air defenses and striking time-sensitive targets across vast distances, simply were not treated as priority programs during the Obama years.
The administration’s approach to advanced military systems reflected broader philosophical differences about the nature of future conflict. Obama and Defense Secretary Gates made the controversial decision to terminate F-22 production after 187 aircraft, arguing that the United States already possessed sufficient air-superiority fighters for existing and projected needs. Their logic emphasized platforms and capabilities needed for irregular warfare and counterinsurgency operations rather than what they characterized as “exquisite” systems designed for hypothetical peer conflicts.
Critics of this approach argued that it represented a dangerous de-emphasis on preparation for conflict with peer or near-peer adversaries. The 2011 disbanding of the Navy’s 2nd Fleet, responsible for North Atlantic operations during the Cold War, exemplified this perspective. The decision reflected post-Cold War assumptions about the likelihood of high-end naval conflict and prioritized budgetary efficiency over maintaining capability against potential threats.
These choices, viewed in retrospect, represented missed opportunities for hypersonic development. While China and Russia were beginning to invest seriously in hypersonic technologies during this period, the United States remained focused on perfecting counterinsurgency capabilities and managing fiscal constraints. The result was not merely delayed development, but a fundamental loss of momentum that would take years to recover.
Trump Era Acceleration: Recognition and Response
The 2016 election of Donald Trump marked a dramatic shift in American approach to hypersonic weapons development. The new administration’s focus on great power competition and military modernization created an environment where hypersonic systems finally received the priority attention they had long deserved. This transformation was driven not by abstract strategic planning, but by the uncomfortable recognition that Russia and China had gained significant advantages in hypersonic development while the United States remained largely focused elsewhere.
Strategic competition became the organizing principle of Trump administration defense policy, with hypersonic weapons identified as a critical capability gap. Russian tests of systems like the Kinzhal and Avangard, combined with Chinese demonstrations of hypersonic glide vehicles, made clear that the United States faced a genuine technological challenge from peer competitors. Pentagon leadership, responding to this competitive pressure, designated hypersonics as one of the top modernization priorities, explicitly stating the goal to “dominate future battlefields.”
The administration backed this strategic shift with substantial resources. The 2020 defense budget included a dramatic increase in hypersonic research and development funding, with Pentagon requests reaching $2.6-$3.2 billion which was a 23% increase over the previous year. This represented not merely incremental improvement, but a fundamental commitment to accelerating the transition from research to operational capability.
All service branches responded to this new priority by ramping up hypersonic efforts. The Army and Navy collaborated on developing a common hypersonic glide body, with the Army targeting its first Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) batteries for fielding by fiscal year 2023. The Air Force pursued the air-launched AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), with initial flight tests scheduled for 2020. These programs represented concrete steps toward operational capability rather than indefinite research efforts.
President Trump personally championed hypersonic development, frequently referencing what he called a “super-duper missile” and tying American progress directly to national security and technological superiority. This high-level attention ensured that hypersonic programs received not only funding but also the organizational focus necessary to overcome bureaucratic obstacles and accelerate development timelines.
The administration also recognized the industrial base requirements for hypersonic production. Significant investments in test facilities and production infrastructure were designed to enable rapid fielding once development programs matured. This comprehensive approach addressed not only the technological challenges of hypersonic development but also the practical requirements for manufacturing and deploying these complex systems at scale.
By the end of Trump’s first term, the trajectory toward operational hypersonic weapons appeared clear. Army officers confirmed plans to deploy the LRHW system by fiscal year 2023, with Navy submarine-launched variants following by 2025. While Air Force programs faced some delays, the overall expectation was that the United States would transition from testing and prototyping to fielding operational systems within the early 2020s.
This accelerated timeline represented a dramatic departure from the previous two decades of hypersonic development. Where earlier administrations had treated hypersonics as interesting research topics, the Trump administration approached them as urgent operational requirements. The question was whether this momentum could be sustained through changes in political leadership.
Biden Administration: Funding Meets Bureaucratic Reality
The Biden administration inherited hypersonic programs that were finally receiving appropriate attention and resources but was unable to translate increased funding into operational capability. Despite continued strong budgetary support for hypersonic development, the new administration encountered the full weight of institutional obstacles that had been building for decades.
Perhaps the most significant challenge was the fragmented nature of American hypersonic development. Unlike their Chinese and Russian counterparts, who could pursue more centralized approaches, U.S. programs remained divided among the Army, Navy, and Air Force, each with distinct technical standards, operational concepts, and procurement authorities. This fragmentation led to duplicative efforts, slower knowledge sharing between services, and competition for limited specialized resources.
The complexity extended beyond inter-service coordination to encompass the broader defense ecosystem. Successful hypersonic development requires seamless collaboration between the Department of Defense, national laboratories, intelligence agencies, and a vast defense industrial base. This coordination challenge is compounded by overlapping security protocols, bureaucratic mandates, and institutional inertia that had accumulated over decades of peacetime operations.
Testing infrastructure emerged as a particularly acute constraint. Hypersonic vehicles operate in extreme environments, requiring specialized wind tunnels and test ranges that simply did not exist in sufficient numbers to support accelerated development schedules. Much of the existing testing infrastructure dated to the Cold War and was inadequate for the sophisticated systems being developed in the 2020s. Even with increased investment in testing capabilities, limited facility availability created bottlenecks and delays that forced programs to compete for access to critical validation trials.
Supply chain constraints further complicated development efforts. Only a handful of domestic suppliers possessed the capability to provide the advanced materials required for hypersonic vehicles, creating vulnerabilities and delays when demand exceeded capacity. Unlike conventional weapons systems, hypersonics require materials and components that operate reliably under extreme temperature and stress conditions, limiting the available supplier base.
And of course, the pandemic was a major blow to any supply chain, let alone a more sophisticated one like hypersonic missile development.
The American defense acquisition culture also proved to be a significant obstacle. Where Chinese and Russian systems could potentially be fielded with less rigorous testing and validation, the U.S. system emphasized “getting it right” over “getting it first.” This risk-averse approach, while ensuring high-quality systems, resulted in extensive review processes and re-baselining efforts whenever test programs encountered setbacks.
Congressional budget processes added another layer of complexity. While overall funding remained strong, appropriations were often tied to specific technical milestones. When programs experienced delays or test failures as inevitably occurred in cutting-edge development efforts funding could be delayed or redirected, interrupting program momentum and forcing schedule adjustments.
Despite these challenges, the Biden administration maintained commitment to hypersonic development and continued the high funding levels established during the Trump years. However, the gap between increased spending and operational deployment highlighted the depth of institutional obstacles that decades of neglect had created in American defense development processes.
Current Status: Ready for Deployment
As of 2025, American hypersonic development has reached a critical juncture. After years of bureaucratic delays and technical challenges, two Air Force hypersonic systems are approaching operational readiness, potentially transforming deterrence strategy in the Pacific theater where competition with China continues to intensify.
The strategic logic for hypersonic deployment has become increasingly clear. China’s primary military advantage lies in its ability to rapidly mass forces before the United States can effectively position its assets across the vast Pacific distances. Hypersonic weapons deployed throughout the region would fundamentally complicate Chinese operational planning by threatening swift, precise strikes against advancing naval forces and providing crucial time for American and allied forces to achieve defensive positioning.
As hypersonics expert Dr. Mark Lewis explains, the fundamental appeal is straightforward: “If I can take a weapon that does everything that a Tomahawk does, same range, same package, but instead of flying at Mach 0.7 it flies at Mach 7, why wouldn’t I want that?” This speed advantage translates directly into reduced warning time for adversaries and increased survivability against defensive systems.
The Air Force has developed two mature hypersonic weapons that are nearing deployment readiness. The Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), developed by Lockheed Martin, represents a boost-glide system that has exceeded test expectations and can be mounted on B-52 bombers, with each aircraft capable of carrying four missiles. This system provides immediate capability for long-range precision strikes at hypersonic speeds.
The Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), developed through collaboration between Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, offers even greater versatility through its air-breathing scramjet engine. This system’s design allows for exceptional platform integration, with a B-2 bomber potentially carrying 15 hypersonic cruise missiles and B-52 aircraft capable of carrying even more. The scramjet propulsion system provides sustained hypersonic flight rather than the ballistic trajectory of boost-glide systems.
Recent Air Force commitments to ARRW deployment signal recognition that hypersonic capabilities cannot remain perpetually in development while adversaries field operational systems. The current Chinese advantage stems significantly from perception—their systems represent deployed threats that influence American operational planning, regardless of their actual effectiveness in combat scenarios.
The Imperative for Action
The United States now faces a fundamental choice about its hypersonic future. The technology has matured to the point where deployment is feasible but continued delays risk allowing the competitive advantage to slip further toward peer competitors who have demonstrated greater willingness to field systems without perfect validation.
Deterrence in the modern strategic environment requires visible, credible capabilities. Weapons systems confined to test ranges and development programs do not influence adversary decision-making. Only deployed systems, operated by trained crews and integrated into operational planning, send unmistakable signals about American resolve and capability.
The immediate priority should be accelerating deployment of existing mature technologies rather than pursuing perfect solutions through extended development cycles. Both ARRW and HACM represent ready-for-deployment capabilities that would provide immediate operational value while generating the experience base necessary for future system improvements.
The path forward requires accepting that hypersonic weapons, like all military systems, will continue to evolve through operational use rather than laboratory perfection. Initial deployments will undoubtedly reveal areas for improvement, but the alternative—continued delay while competitors consolidate their advantages—poses far greater strategic risks.
America stands at a crossroads in hypersonic development. Two decades of interrupted progress, shifting priorities, and bureaucratic obstacles have finally led to mature, deployable systems. The question is no longer whether the United States can develop effective hypersonic weapons, but whether it possesses the institutional will to move decisively from development to deployment. The technology is ready. What remains is the commitment to act on that readiness before the strategic window closes entirely.