Associated PressAssociated Press
FILE - This handout photo provided by the U.S. Navy shows a common hypersonic glide body (C-HGB) launching from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, in Kauai, Hawaii, March 19, 2020, during a Department of Defense flight experiment. The department is working in collaboration with industry and academia to field hypersonic war-fighting capabilities. (Luke Lamborn/U.S. Navy via AP)
FILE - The Lyndon B. Johnson travels down the Kennebec River on its way to sea, in this Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022, file photo, in Phippsburg, Maine. The Navy's largest and most expensive destroyers were built around a new gun system that could rapidly fire GPS-guided projectiles more than 50 miles, paving the way for the Marines to storm ashore. But those weapons, rendered useless without ammo, are going to be removed without ever firing a single shot as the Navy rushes to replace them with hypersonic weapons. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, files)
FILE - This handout photo provided by the U.S. Navy shows a common hypersonic glide body (C-HGB) launching from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, in Kauai, Hawaii, March 19, 2020, during a Department of Defense flight experiment. The department is working in collaboration with industry and academia to field hypersonic war-fighting capabilities. (Luke Lamborn/U.S. Navy via AP)

The U.S. Navy is racing to field its first hypersonic weapon by the end of next year.

The United States is in a race with Russia and China to develop weapons that can travel at high speeds but are difficult to shoot down.

The Russian military claims that it deployed hypersonic missiles against targets in Ukraine on Saturday and Sunday, marking the first use of the weapon in combat. The Pentagon couldn't say if a hypersonic weapon was used in the attacks.

The military is trying to catch up.

A hypersonic glide vehicle would reach speeds seven to eight times faster than sound before hitting the target if the U.S. weapon launched like a missile.

Bath Iron Works in Maine is working on changes to the weapon system on three destroyers.

The work would begin in October of the fiscal year that begins in October of the following year, the Navy said.

Anything that is five times faster than the speed of sound is a hypersonic weapon. That is about 3,800 mph. intercontinental missiles travel in a predictable path, making it possible to intercept them.

The weapons can be maneuvered.

The Navy's Aegis system would have trouble intercepting such objects because of their unpredictable movement and lack of time to react.

Russia claims to have missiles that can deploy hypersonic glide vehicles as well as a hypersonic cruise missile.

The U.S. failed to invest in the new technology with only a fraction of the people who worked on the program in the 1980s.

If we want to pursue parity, we will need to back this effort with more money, time, and talent than we are now.

As the Pentagon prepares to release its budget proposal later this month, the invasion of Ukraine serves as a backdrop.

Thanks to a design failure, the Navy has an advantage in this instance, as the three stealthy Zumwalt-class destroyers will have plenty of space to accommodate them.

The ships were built around a gun system that was supposed to use rocket-boosted projectiles to pound targets. The Navy canceled the system because it was too expensive, leaving each of the ships with a useless loading system and a pair of 155-mm guns hidden in turrets.

Bryan Clark, a defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, said that the retrofit of all three ships will likely cost more than $1 billion, but will give a new capability to the tech-laden, electric-drive ships that already cost the Navy $23.5 billion to design and build.

The engineering is easy. Clark said it would take time and money to make it happen.

The Navy plans to field weapons on the destroyers and Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines in the fiscal year of 2025.

Clark said that the destroyers would be based in the Pacific Ocean to deter China from attacking Taiwan.

The U.S. has been hesitant in the past about using hypersonic weapons because of technological hurdles. Adversaries continued their research and development.

The completion of weapon testing was celebrated by Russia after they fired off a bunch of Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles.

Thompson said that Russia may be exaggerating the capability of such weapons to make up for weakness in other areas.

He said that it was unclear how effective the weapons were for the time being.

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