The United States is on a crash course to field prototype hypersonic weapons within three years, with more elaborate and mature systems to follow soon after. Flight tests will ramp up quickly this year, with follow-on tests as frequently as every six weeks over the next four years. But before the weapons can go mainstream, the U.S. must build the human and physical infrastructure to support them, said Michael E. White, the assistant director for hypersonics in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering.
The Army's new vision dubs it an “All-Domain” Army and envisions “expanding … into the maritime, air, space, and cyber domains” while seizing new roles in long-range strike and suppressing enemy air defense. A new white paper released March 16 declares that, while part of the Joint force, the Army holds a pre-eminent role in combat by virtue of its size, and surmises that the other services should adopt its methodologies. Titled, “Army Multi-Domain Transformation: Ready to Win in Competition and Conflict,” and released by Army Chief of Staff Gen. James C. McConville, the paper envisions a “bold transformation” of Army organizations, weapons, and strategy, to “provide the Joint Force with the range, speed, and convergence of cutting-edge technologies that will be needed to provide future decision dominance and overmatch required to win the next fight.”
President Joe Biden said the U.S. will “respond accordingly” if North Korea continues to escalate following the March 25 test launch of two short-range ballistic missiles, which he said violated a United Nations resolution. During his first press conference in office, he said the test launches show that North Korea is the top foreign policy crisis the U.S. faces. His administration is consulting with allies, and Biden said he is “prepared for some form of diplomacy, but it has to be conditioned upon the end result of denuclearization.”
President Joe Biden on March 25 reiterated that it will be difficult for U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan by the May 1 deadline, but said American troops will come home soon. “It’s hard to meet the May 1st withdrawal deadline,” Biden said during his first press conference in office. “We are working with our allies. We are not staying a long time. We will leave, the question is when we leave.” When asked if U.S. forces will remain in Afghanistan next year, Biden was definitive, saying, “I can’t picture that being the case.”
U.S. special operations forces need a new armed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft to fully support all its missions, Army Gen. Richard D. Clarke, head of U.S. Special Operations Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 25. “In many remote areas, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and close air support assets are stretched thin and come at high cost,” he said. “We continue to work with DOD to address this issue.”
