If you’re developing something that’ll put China’s best missiles to shame, what do you dub it? The “super-duper missile,” of course.
The media’s going to seize upon that moniker bestowed upon a new missile tipped by President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday.
It’s made it into pretty much every headline I’ve seen (including ours, to be fair). And, if the missile turns out to live up to the specs laid out at the event, it’s going to be very much worthy of the branding.
The occasion was the unveiling of the official Space Force flag at the White House, but Trump had one more thing to talk about: a new hypersonic missile that would match or beat similar efforts from China and Russia.
Federal judge blocks New York law banning ICE agents from wearing masks
California mom begged for help before ex gunned her down in front of their 4-year-old son: DA
ICE detainee who illegally re-entered US after deportation dies at Delaney Hall
Unearthed video exposes El-Sayed’s opinion on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants
Watch: New Women’s Pro Baseball League Begins With ‘Worst Anthem Rendition of All Time’
‘The Brink of War’ tells story of Reagan-Gorbachev nuclear discussions
Knoxville Mayor Shares Chilling 2020 Talk When Deborah Birx Admitted the Truth Didn’t Matter When It Came to the Science
Mass Cyclospora Outbreak Officially Turns Deadly
Watch: Trump Goes Off When Reporter Says He’s With ‘MSNOW’
Watch: 4 of the Most Intense Exchanges When RFK Jr. Put CNN’s Dana Bash in Her Place on COVID and Fauci
Democrats blink as Schumer helps GOP clear key shutdown hurdle
Trump Says ‘Last Chance’ Talks with Iran Are ‘Going on Right Now’
‘Doctor’ El-Sayed’s bizarre health hustle raises campaign headache: ‘Moon Juice Brain Dust’
Mamdani’s grocery giveaway hits ID snag as critics cry foul: ‘Make it make sense’
Trump administration’s immigration push fuels ICE’s biggest arrest month in agency history
“We’re building right now incredible military equipment at a level that nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said at the news conference.
“We have no choice. We have to do it with the adversaries we have out there. We have, I call it the super-duper missile,” he continued. “I heard the other night, 17 times faster than what they have right now.”
“You’ve heard Russia has five times, and China is working on five or six times, we have one 17 times, and it’s just gotten the go-ahead.”
It’s the “fastest in the world by a factor of almost three,” Trump added.
The media had its usual field day over this one — particularly after the Pentagon refused comment and deferred to the White House, only for White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to defer back to the Pentagon.
Update: The White House has referred back to the Pentagon on the "super duper missile." The circle is complete.
“Yeah I would just refer you back to the president's remarks & the Pentagon. I don't have any new information on that at this point," said press sec Kayleigh McEnany. https://t.co/yVQXKAvdDh
— Elizabeth McLaughlin (@Elizabeth_McLau) May 15, 2020
Federal judge blocks New York law banning ICE agents from wearing masks
California mom begged for help before ex gunned her down in front of their 4-year-old son: DA
ICE detainee who illegally re-entered US after deportation dies at Delaney Hall
Unearthed video exposes El-Sayed’s opinion on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants
Watch: New Women’s Pro Baseball League Begins With ‘Worst Anthem Rendition of All Time’
‘The Brink of War’ tells story of Reagan-Gorbachev nuclear discussions
Knoxville Mayor Shares Chilling 2020 Talk When Deborah Birx Admitted the Truth Didn’t Matter When It Came to the Science
Mass Cyclospora Outbreak Officially Turns Deadly
Watch: Trump Goes Off When Reporter Says He’s With ‘MSNOW’
Watch: 4 of the Most Intense Exchanges When RFK Jr. Put CNN’s Dana Bash in Her Place on COVID and Fauci
Democrats blink as Schumer helps GOP clear key shutdown hurdle
Trump Says ‘Last Chance’ Talks with Iran Are ‘Going on Right Now’
‘Doctor’ El-Sayed’s bizarre health hustle raises campaign headache: ‘Moon Juice Brain Dust’
Mamdani’s grocery giveaway hits ID snag as critics cry foul: ‘Make it make sense’
Trump administration’s immigration push fuels ICE’s biggest arrest month in agency history
In response, Pentagon official Jonathan Rath Hoffman tweeted back that they were working on “a range of hypersonic missiles.”
The Department of Defense is working on developing a range of hypersonic missiles to counter our adversaries. https://t.co/ATb1XLHFtl
— Jonathan Rath Hoffman (@ChiefPentSpox) May 15, 2020
So, what is a hypersonic missile?
It’s defined as any missile which goes past Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. The United States conducted a test of a newly developed hypersonic missile glide body in March, Reuters reported.
The missile follows an unpredictable path, which makes it difficult to neutralize.
It’s fired on a rocket up to 25 miles in the atmosphere, at which point the hypersonic glide body detaches and flies toward the target. This unpredictability is actually why they’re considered so lethal; regular ballistic missiles have a predictable arc, whereas hypersonic glide vehicles can do extraordinary things to evade a country’s missile defenses.
Federal judge blocks New York law banning ICE agents from wearing masks
California mom begged for help before ex gunned her down in front of their 4-year-old son: DA
ICE detainee who illegally re-entered US after deportation dies at Delaney Hall
Unearthed video exposes El-Sayed’s opinion on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants
Watch: New Women’s Pro Baseball League Begins With ‘Worst Anthem Rendition of All Time’
‘The Brink of War’ tells story of Reagan-Gorbachev nuclear discussions
Knoxville Mayor Shares Chilling 2020 Talk When Deborah Birx Admitted the Truth Didn’t Matter When It Came to the Science
Mass Cyclospora Outbreak Officially Turns Deadly
Watch: Trump Goes Off When Reporter Says He’s With ‘MSNOW’
Watch: 4 of the Most Intense Exchanges When RFK Jr. Put CNN’s Dana Bash in Her Place on COVID and Fauci
Democrats blink as Schumer helps GOP clear key shutdown hurdle
Trump Says ‘Last Chance’ Talks with Iran Are ‘Going on Right Now’
‘Doctor’ El-Sayed’s bizarre health hustle raises campaign headache: ‘Moon Juice Brain Dust’
Mamdani’s grocery giveaway hits ID snag as critics cry foul: ‘Make it make sense’
Trump administration’s immigration push fuels ICE’s biggest arrest month in agency history
A senior NATO official told Agence France-Presse that in a hypersonic missile strike, the target country wouldn’t know what happened “until there’s a boom on the ground.”
It’s unclear whether this was the missile Trump was referring to in his comments on Friday, but given the context, one would assume it was something else. Both China and Russia have tested hypersonic missiles, and Russia says it has an operable version.
It’s always a good day at the White House when both China and Russia can be put on notice like this. It’s even better when you consider that Russia has used the threat of aiming their putative hypersonic missile arsenal at the United States if we were to deploy intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Europe.
Russia, however, clearly isn’t the main target for the “super-duper missile,” when it arrives.
China has been fairly aggressive about pushing its hypersonic missile, the DF-17. When 16 of them appeared at last year’s National Day parade, the Beijing-friendly South China Morning Post said the “boost-glide missile may be powerful enough to penetrate US missile shields in the region, transforming Beijing’s previously defensive strategy of containing independence-leaning forces in the Taiwan Strait.”
That’s a dangerous statement to begin with, particularly when it comes from a paper that — if certainly not under the heel of the Chinese Communist Party the same way Xinhua news agency or similar propaganda mills are — clearly amplifies pro-Beijing voices.
Federal judge blocks New York law banning ICE agents from wearing masks
California mom begged for help before ex gunned her down in front of their 4-year-old son: DA
ICE detainee who illegally re-entered US after deportation dies at Delaney Hall
Unearthed video exposes El-Sayed’s opinion on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants
Watch: New Women’s Pro Baseball League Begins With ‘Worst Anthem Rendition of All Time’
‘The Brink of War’ tells story of Reagan-Gorbachev nuclear discussions
Knoxville Mayor Shares Chilling 2020 Talk When Deborah Birx Admitted the Truth Didn’t Matter When It Came to the Science
Mass Cyclospora Outbreak Officially Turns Deadly
Watch: Trump Goes Off When Reporter Says He’s With ‘MSNOW’
Watch: 4 of the Most Intense Exchanges When RFK Jr. Put CNN’s Dana Bash in Her Place on COVID and Fauci
Democrats blink as Schumer helps GOP clear key shutdown hurdle
Trump Says ‘Last Chance’ Talks with Iran Are ‘Going on Right Now’
‘Doctor’ El-Sayed’s bizarre health hustle raises campaign headache: ‘Moon Juice Brain Dust’
Mamdani’s grocery giveaway hits ID snag as critics cry foul: ‘Make it make sense’
Trump administration’s immigration push fuels ICE’s biggest arrest month in agency history
If Beijing is going to saber-rattle over the issue of Taiwan with its hypersonic missiles, well, the best medicine is to saber-rattle right back.
Mutually assured destruction worked during the Cold War. Even in the 21st century, that paradigm still works.
Every headline seemed to trumpet what the president called the missile. Few seemed to grasp the import of those words.
If this missile can deliver on something even remotely like what the president said it would, the big news from Friday’s news conference won’t be that Space Force flag.
Story cited here.
