An influential American Senator in Washington has observed that the US is no longer dominating several advanced technologies, and India, Russia, and China have advantages on hypersonic technology.
During a nomination hearing on Wednesday, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee- Senator Jack Reed- said: “We’re in a situation where we have technological improvements. We used to dominate technology. That’s no longer the case. Hypersonic, clearly, China and India, Russia have advantages on it.”
“We are about to emerge for the first time in the history of the world in a trilateral nuclear competition. No longer bilateral. The Soviet Union, the United States — no, it’s China, Russia, and the United States,” Senator Reed stressed, asking to be undersecretary of defence for acquisition and sustainment Dr William LaPlante how he intends to address these issues.
Dr LaPlante answered that he hopes to begin immediately to accelerate getting into the mainstream weapons systems.
“These new technologies that you talked about. We do have a lot of initiatives over the last several years, thanks to this committee, using your authority to rapidly contract and to do prototypes. I think that’s very good,” he said.
“We got to get those capabilities rapidly into the weapons systems, and sometimes, bridge what they call the valley of death. So, I pledge to work with the programme officers to make it their job to do continuous upgrades of technology so we can get back into this race that you talked about,” he added.
The mission of delivering and sustaining timely, cost-effective, and uncompromised capabilities for the armed forces and the DOD has never been more important than it is today, he further added.
In his opening remarks, Dr LaPlante said: “China, our pacing threat; an increasingly authoritarian Russia focused on regional hegemony; malign actors; and other existential threats pose grave risks to the global order and threaten our way of life.”
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