Bhopinder Singh
While the US too has been working on hypersonic technology, it is yet to conduct a weapons test while the Chinese have already done it
On October 4, 1954, then Soviet Union had launched the first earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik 1, to shock the rival USA in the early days of the Cold War. This momentary setback in the ensuing rivalry of sovereign competences birthed the term ‘Sputnik Moment' to imply the disconcerting technological gap between nations, especially with an ‘enemy' nation. The motive was to accept the bitter reality of inequality and galvanise the national mood towards a common purpose and resolve to overcome the obvious lacunae. Later, Senator John Kerry used the term “New Sputnik Moment” to invoke the much-needed spirit of bipartisanship on matters concerning new energy sources, education, infrastructure and technology, all of which were falling prey to partisan chest-thumping. Former US President Barack Obama was to evocatively posit the task of rebuilding the economy in the aftermath of the 2007 global economic crisis as “Our Generation's Sputnik Moment”! Most recently, in a recalibrated context of the most relevant ‘enemy' facing the ‘Free World', Joint Chiefs of US Military Staff, General Mark Milley, likened the dangerous Chinese advancements in military technology with the test of its hypersonic weapons system as “very close” to a “Sputnik Moment”.
The fact that the forewarning came from the topmost serving General of the US military makes the latest ‘enemy' threat both credible and significant. The latest hair-raising alarm against the Chinese can be contextualised to the time when the Soviets launched the Sputnik along with the assumption that it could be plunged back into the US territory without any credible deterrence — today, similar questions of the US military's capability to deter a potential Chinese deployment of its hypersonic weapon loom. The extremely provocative backdrop of the ongoing Chinese belligerence in the Taiwan Straits, South China Seas or even along the Indian border reiterates the vulnerability felt in the Sino-wary sphere. As it is, the much famed and multibillion worth of US missile defence systems like the Saudi-procured Patriot batteries had come a cropper against the crude drone attacks fired by Yemen's Houthi rebels in 2019. Even the subsequent exposure of the much-bandied Israel's Iron Dome interceptors in the Israeli-Hamas war resulted in 60-odd Hamas rockets piercing through the Israeli air defence system. Such demonstrated gaps in the supposedly ‘cutting edge' and existing missile defence systems put the threat of the Chinese hypersonic capability in another realm, even if the Chinese trial missile is believed to have missed the target by 24 miles.
Some naysayers have downplayed the Chinese alarm by pointing to the possible attempts by the Pentagon and the all-powerful arms industry to drum up the critical political rhetoric and warmongering towards finances for the estimated $1.3 trillion investment in ‘nuclear modernisation' of its entire base of the nuclear ‘triad'. Aiding this plausible view is the recent Biden commitment towards defending Taiwan militarily, signing AUKUS (a security pact among the US, UK and Australia) and punting substantially on the sensitive microchip industry to stay ahead of the Chinese on the technological front. In times of overall economic hardship (COVID crisis, ironically originating from China), parallel allusion to a grave Cold War moment to frame a compelling and bipartisan national argument in favour of strengthening the military wherewithal is politically kosher.
Irrespective of the suitability of the expression, the fact remains that while the US too has been working on hypersonic technology, it has yet to conduct a hypersonic weapons test. True to their patent playbook of deflection, the Chinese have rubbished news of ‘weaponising' the technology and, instead, attributed the same towards a re-useable space vehicle for “peaceful purposes”. This convenient tact affords the Chinese to rebuff any calls towards nuclear arms control until the last moment, by when the die is cast in Beijing's favour. The unofficial Chinese mouthpiece, Global Times, worded its ostensible clarification while still retaining the spectre of threat in its phraseology: “It is Washington that has gone hysterical in viewing China. Granted, the US has enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet several times over, but China has sufficient countermeasures to make its rivals fear and think twice before launching a strike against China. This is the goal of China's defence strategy that the US does not understand.”
Such weapons and technology add to the ‘destabilising' quotient of the Chinese imperatives that can be masked in unrelated socio-economic-diplomatic manoeuvres that are usually deployed in adjunct to the military footprint. Oddly, the reverse-engineering of American technology has played a considerable role in developing platforms like the Chinese hypersonic missiles programme, which the seminal Financial Times article (which broke the news first) described as “far more advanced than the US officials realised”, adding that “the test raised new questions about why the US often underestimated China's military modernisation”.
Meanwhile, back home, the Indian leadership is content with obfuscations, whataboutery, mealy-mouthed statements and political bombast to downplay the Chinese threat. The reality of the Chinese capabilities is staring at the world, and it calls for an honest, detailed and thorough recognition of the threat perceptions with due preparation for countermeasures. The professional and realistic assessment of a ‘Sputnik Moment' by a US General is one such lesson.
(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. The views expressed are personal.)
