Gen. Mark Milley warned on Wednesday of a “very significant” test of a hypersonic weapons system, which he said was concerning.
Milley didn’t directly compare the event to a “Sputnik moment,” but he said it was close.
“What we saw was a very significant event of a test of a hypersonic weapon system. And it is very concerning,” Milley told Bloomberg Television’s “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations.”
“I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it’s very close to that," Milley added. "It has all of our attention.”
Wait, let’s back up: The Financial Times first reported last week that China conducted two hypersonic weapons tests over the summer.
The Chinese military launched a rocket that used a “fractional orbital bombardment” system to propel a nuclear-capable “hypersonic glide vehicle” around the Earth on July 27. A second test occurred on Aug.
The news outlet reported that the Pentagon had been “shocked” by the tests because it showed that China demonstrated a new weapons capability.
What the administration says: White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that Milley was discussing the concern that “we all have” about China’s efforts to modernize its military.
“They continue to pursue capabilities that continue to produce tensions in the region, and we continue to have concerns about that. And, I think that was reflected in his comments,” Psaki said.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters that he doesn't think it does “any good for us to characterize this and put a label on it,” referring to the test.
“There's a suite of issues with respect to China from the security perspective,” Kirby told reporters on Wednesday. “And that's what our job here is at the department that that deeply concern us about the trajectory of where things are going in the Indo-Pacific”
IS THIS A SPUTNIK MOMENT?
The “Sputnik moment” refers to the Soviet Union launching the world’s first artificial satellite in 1957. This left the U.S. and the rest of the world in shock because it wasn’t clear that the Soviets had been that far ahead.
Matthew Kroenig, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, told The Hill that China’s weapons test is “important, but it’s not close to a Sputnik moment.”
“We kind of knew already that China was working on hypersonic missiles, probably that they were ahead in some ways,” Kroenig said. “If the United States wanted to go ahead and test a system like this, we almost certainly could."
Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation specializing in China’s military and foreign policy, says the U.S. should be concerned that the test went into orbit, because it means every Chinese satellite could theoretically be a “very low warning, first-strike weapon.”
“We should be concerned because it is further evidence that the Chinese are pushing a very broad military modernization effort that includes hypersonics, it includes other highly sophisticated high-tech weapons,” Cheng said.
Samuel Hickey, a research analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, says the test shows that the U.S. and China need to communicate with each other on strategic defense.
“All it really does is say that the United States and China really need to sit down and have a conversation about their nuclear weapons, about what their plans are, what their intentions are, and how they view each other's strategic deterrence,” Hickey said.
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