India, Russia and China have the advantage when it comes to hypersonic technology and the United States is no longer the dominant force in several advanced technologies, an influential American senator in Washington said on 23 March.
“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,” Senator Jack Reed, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said during a nomination hearing on 23 March according to an AFP report.
“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 said and asked Dr William LaPlante, to be undersecretary of defence for acquisition and sustainment, how he intends to address these issues according to the report.
Dr LaPlante said that the target will be to get into the mainstream weapons systems as soon as possible. “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,” AFP quoted him as saying.
“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.”
