By Kris Osborn – President & Editor-In-Chief, Warrior Maven
Kris Osborn, President of the Center for Military Modernization and Warrior Maven
Hello and welcome. This is Kris Osborn, President of the Center for Military Modernization and Warrior Maven, a lot of discussion right now about hypersonics and the pace at which they are evolving technically and the potential gap or deficit between already demonstrated Russian and Chinese hypersonic weapons, a real push right now to accelerate hypersonics. We are lucky to be joined by a leading expert in missile defense and hypersonic weaponry, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, as well as the deputy assistant advisor of national security of the President. So welcome Tim Morrison Excuse me. Thanks for your time.
Tim Morrison, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute
Thank you, Kris. I appreciate it.
Kris Osborn, President of the Center for Military Modernization and Warrior Maven
How quickly can the US close the gap? If I recall, I was at a missile defense convention not long ago and a senior Army official flat out said we’re number three right now. And we’ve got to close the gap. The LRHW long range weapon is slated to be ready by 2023. The ARRW forthe Air Force, the air launched hypersonic weapon is moving along quickly, Can this gap be closed? So how quickly?
Tim Morrison, Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute
I think the gap can absolutely be closed. We are looking at on a technology where we have experienced in the past some of this technology was was a feature of the Cold War. The real question is and this is what former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Hyten used to talk about is what is our expectation our risk tolerance? Are we prepared to fail?
And and so you know, we look at the number of tests that Russia and China have conducted in so called hypersonic boost glide weapons. There’s also hypersonic air breathing weapons, hypersonic cruise missiles, but but chiefly with the boost glide.
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“We test and we fail, we test and we fail. And we spend years studying each each failure where our our adversaries test and fail test and fail, test and fail. And they’re getting it right because they’re testing more than we are so so we have to be prepared to accept more risks.
We have to be prepared to accept that. It’s like sort of like when you when when Edison invented the light bulb, you learned 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb. And then you found the way to make a light bulb. We have to realize we’re gonna find a lot of different ways not to make a hypersonic boost glide weapon, and then we’re going to make hypersonic boost glide weapon
Tim Morrison, Senior fellow at the Hudson Institute
Thank you so much, Kris. Please, please keep writing I’ll keep reading
Kris Osborn is the Defense Editor for the National Interest. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Master’s Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
