Hypersonic Weapons: What Are the Challenges for the Armed Forces?
Hypersonic systems are becoming attributes of power for the states that design and implement them, at the risk of reviving an arms race.
■ In just a few years, hypersonic glide vehicles and cruise missiles have become new symbols of military power, signaling a return to strategic competition between States.
■ Hypersonic weapons are an alternative to “conventional” ballistic or cruise missiles and combine the advantages of speed and maneuverability to overcome theater and homeland anti-missile defense systems, thus being able to reach targets deep in enemy territory or at sea.
■ Although uncertainties remain with regard to the budgetary sustainability of such weapons, the gradually increasing maturity of hypersonic technologies makes the adoption of such systems by the major powers inevitable. They will significantly modify the nature of future military operations, notably influencing the decision-making cycles and command architectures.
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Hypersonic Weapons: What Are the Challenges for the Armed Forces?
Security Studies Center
Heir to a tradition dating back to the founding of Ifri, the Security Studies Center provides public and private decision-makers as well as the general public with the keys to understanding power relations and contemporary modes of conflict as well as those to come. Through its positioning at the juncture of politics and operations, the credibility of its civil-military team and the wide distribution of its publications in French and English, the Center for Security Studies constitutes in the French landscape of think tanks a unique center of research and influence on the national and international defense debate.
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