OREANDA-NEWS. The United States is worried that it is several years behind Russia and China in the development of hypersonic weapons. The Military Watch portal writes about this with reference to the report of the Congressional Research Service.

The document says: "Russia and China probably already have at their disposal hypersonic gliding vehicles equipped with nuclear warheads, while the United States has not even begun to develop such programs."

In the meantime, the US military budget suggests spending $ 3.2 billion on hypersonic weapons research alone. This amount exceeds the total defense spending of the vast majority of countries, the newspaper reports.

In addition, the report expresses regret that the Pentagon has no clearly defined objectives for the use of hypersonic weapons, which makes it difficult to develop.

The document also quotes the former head of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration Michael Griffin, who warned that "America does not have systems that pose a threat to Russia and China and does not have protection from their systems."

It is recalled that on July 19, the Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov successfully fired a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile at a ground target. This was announced by the Zvezda TV channel, which published a video of the launch.