China's hypersonic rocket test "exceptionally close" to a "Sputnik moment"

 

 

general Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned Wednesday that China's test of a hypersonic missile is "very concerning" and "very close" to the sort of "Sputnik moment" that set off the Space Race during the Cold War.

Why it matters: The comments by America's top formally dressed general underscore the depths of U.S. concerns about China's rapid military expansion and improvement of advanced weaponry.

The higher perspective: In 1957, the Soviet Association's stunning launch of the Sputnik satellite raised alarms that the U.S. was falling behind in an innovation race.

The Financial Times revealed last week that China's test of a hypersonic missile, which could convey a nuclear weapon that evades U.S. missile defenses, caught knowledge officials by surprise.

"I couldn't say whether it's a serious Sputnik moment, yet I believe it's very close to that. It has all of our attention," Milley told Bloomberg Television's "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations."

Hidden therein: Weapons experts told Axios that the "Sputnik" comparisons are not appropriate, taking note of that the innovation China utilized is similar to what the U.S. developed with the Space Shuttle program during the 1970s.

"The point about Sputnik is that the Soviets had beaten us to the punch, they put the first satellite up," said Joshua Pollack, a nuclear proliferation master at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. "Weapons payload aside, this is predictable for the US."

Yet, the pace of China's progress, in tandem with its military aggression toward Taiwan, expansion of nuclear missile silos, and broader geopolitical tensions with the U.S., has been sufficient to spark fears of "another cold war."

What they're saying: "They're expanding rapidly — in space, in digital and then in the traditional domains of land, sea and air," Milley said. "And they have gone from a peasant-based infantry army that was very, very large in 1979 to a very capable military that covers all the domains and has global ambitions."

"As we go ahead — over the course of the following 10, 20, 25 years — there's no question to me that the biggest geostrategic challenge to the US is gonna be China," he added. "They've developed a military that's really significant."