U.S. Army and Navy Conduct Joint Hypersonic Missile Test Boosting Long Range Strike Readiness - Sopuli

Hypersonic missiles are an odd type of force projection, their development required advanced engineering and lots of trial and error and yet they don’t really do anything pre-existing missiles can’t do. What they bring to the table is speed and maneuverability at speed. That is it. It is thus easy to miss the impact of them here, as any air defense doctrine is already going to be factoring in that some high value missiles are not going to be stopped, period. What this means broadly in terms of geopolitics though is that the age of large fixed wing fighter-bombers deploying from a network of exposed airbases is coming to a close. In order to survive, one must be able to move and operate out of the field. Fixed wing aircraft cannot do this. Hypersonic missiles make static anything useless and that means the power of Armies has just leap frogged over the power of Navies and Air Forces that existentially require static infrastructure. Distance is no longer a form of safety and protection for Naval and Air Power, and that massively shifts the calculus of geopolitical power.