An Indian research laboratory tests a “scramjet” engine, vital for hypersonic weapons development, in April 2025. Efforts to control hypersonic weapons development are complicated by the fact that much of the research is dual-use in nature, with commercial applications. (Government of India)

The Industrial Race Behind Hypersonic Weapons

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China has spent years developing a robust industrial and research sector supporting hypersonic weapons development. To catch up, the United States has its work cut out.

The debate over whether the United States is losing the hypersonics race to China is often overly simplistic. China has displayed the DF-17 boost glide missile and continues to invest in longer range and sea strike concepts. Russia claims that its Avangard strategic glide vehicle is operational. Russia has also used hypersonic weapons in combat: in November 2024, it fired the Oreshnik, a MIRVed intermediate-range ballistic missile traveling above Mach 10, at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, and used it a second time against western Ukraine in January 2026. The Pentagon classified the Oreshnik as an experimental IRBM based on the RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile. Iran has employed its Fattah missile against Israeli targets, with researchers from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies identifying Fattah debris from strikes in both April and October 2024. By early 2026, Iran had reportedly developed the Fattah-2, a variant integrating a hypersonic glide vehicle, and used in strikes against fortified Israeli military positions.

Hypersonic weapons have now moved from demonstration to combat employment. The United States has moved through uneven development of a range of hypersonic weapons, including the Air Launched Rapid Response Weapon, Dark Eagle, Conventional Prompt Strike, the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, and the Glide Phase Interceptor.

Yet the real import of the hypersonic race is more than creating and successfully testing a missile. It encompasses laboratories, test facilities, furnaces, machine shops, supply chains, and production lines, spanning aerodynamics, propulsion, structures, controls, and materials. The central question is whether it can discover, qualify, manufacture, and sustain the materials and components that allow vehicles to survive flight above Mach 5. On that measure, the public evidence points to a serious Chinese investment advantage, though the operational military implications remain less certain.

Why Hypersonic Weapons Are So Hard to Make

At hypersonic speeds, compressed air around a vehicle generates extreme thermal and mechanical loads. Leading edges, nose tips, engine inlets, control surfaces, and protective skins experience different heating rates during the same flight. Materials expand, oxidize, ablate, and fatigue. Electronics........

© The National Interest