A recent announcement by US defence contractor Lockheed Martin that it has secured a $694 million contract from the US 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, RKS News reported on November 6.
Hypersonic weapons travel at speeds of at least five times the speed of sound, or about 6,100 km per hour, while retaining the ability to perform sharp manoeuvres in flight.
China possesses the world’s largest hypersonic weapons arsenal, largely due to its strategy of large-scale production, RKS News reported. Russia 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 about 4,000 belonging to China. Estimates suggest Russia produces about 80 hypersonic weapons a year, China around 370, while US production remains in the single digits.
The Pentagon plans to spend $37.9 billion on hypersonic weapons programs during fiscal years 2027-31 as it seeks to narrow the gap, RKS News reported. 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. In 2020, China fielded what was described as the world’s first operational hypersonic weapons system, the DF-17 intermediate-range ballistic missile and the DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle.
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 campaign that disabled or destroyed advanced US Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, RKS News reported. China is also the only country reported to have successfully integrated a hypersonic glide vehicle with a fractional orbital bombardment system. Beijing denied testing hypersonic weapons.
Source: RKS News; Center for Security Policy
