does not currently have the ability to even track this weapon, much less defeat it,' said Steve Ganyard, a retired Marine colonel and ABC News contributor who noted that American radars pointing to the Cold War threat of missiles coming over the North Pole would not be in a position to detect a hypersonic weapon coming from the south.Įarlier on Wednesday, Gen. Like other hypersonic vehicles it would be hard to track because the glide vehicles are maneuverable in the atmosphere, unlike ballistic warheads that follow a fixed trajectory, meaning they could weave their way around American radars and ground-based interceptor missile systems. The development of a 'fractional orbital bombardment system' raised concerns about how the United States could counter such a system that could conceivably travel at hypersonic speeds, or greater than five times the speed of sound, after reentering the atmosphere. That growing military capability was demonstrated recently after reports emerged that over the summer China had tested a new hypersonic glide weapon capable of orbiting the earth that could eventually carry a nuclear weapon. 'New developments in 2020 further suggest that the PRC intends to increase the peacetime readiness of its nuclear forces by moving to a launch-on-warning (LOW) posture with an expanded silo-based force,' said the report. In recent months, the growth of China's nuclear force has been captured by commercial satellite images showing the construction of hundreds of missile silos at three locations in northern and western China. That increase is dramatically different than was projected in last year's version of the report which predicted a doubling of China's current nuclear arsenal of several hundred warheads.Įven with China's dramatic increase, it's larger nuclear arsenal will still be much less than the United States' declared stockpile of 3,750 warheads capable of being deployed by hundreds of land-based and sea-launched missiles and a strategic bomber fleet. 'The PRC likely intends to have at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, exceeding the pace and size the DoD projected in 2020,' it added. 'The accelerating pace of the PRC's nuclear expansion may enable the PRC (People's Republic of China) to have up to 700 deliverable nuclear warheads by 2027,' said this year's version of the annual Pentagon report formally known as 'Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China.'

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