A military expert explained the cancellation of a hypersonic missile development project in the United States.

The United States may lack the scientific expertise to create hypersonic missiles. Alexander Mikhailov, head of the Bureau of Military and Political Analysis, told Izvestia on April 22.

The Hong Kong newspaper Asia Times reported yesterday that the US Navy has stopped developing a new generation hypersonic missile. One of the program managers stated that it was closed back in the fall of 2024 due to budget problems and inefficiency. According to the newspaper, this suggests that Washington is experiencing difficulties in creating new expensive weapons systems and is not able to quickly launch high-speed and accurate strikes against naval targets.

"The Americans have been promising to put hypersound into service for many years — since about the middle of the 2010s. <...> The American industrial complex seems to be the most advanced in the world, but in the areas of developing air defense, hypersound, and an underwater nuclear fleet, they lag behind Russia," the expert noted.

According to him, while the development of hypersound in the United States remains within the framework of practical tests.

"The United States lacks the scientific competencies that our country has had since Soviet times. They were multiplied by the scientific contribution of modern scientists and designers," Mikhailov admitted.

He added that such issues have been solved for decades, for which Washington will most likely need to reform the education system, reshuffle the leadership of the military-technical sphere, and select contractors wisely so that the finances for the project are not spent on the wrong company.

The expert recalled that the Russian Federation had put the first corresponding product into service back in 2018. It was a hypersonic complex "Dagger".

"Thus, Russia has become a leader in the hypersonic race. It was our country that was the first to officially put hypersonic weapons into service. Following the Dagger, we have put into service the Zircon, a sea—based hypersonic missile," Mikhailov said.

Following Russia, this type of weapon appeared in China. According to the military expert, statements by other countries about the work on creating hypersound are just speculation.

He explained that Russia and China understand hypersonic weapons as products that can travel at speeds of more than five Mach numbers precisely in the airspace of the Earth, in the low layers of the atmosphere, and not in outer space. They should also be manageable. Only Russia and China have products of this level, the expert emphasized.

On December 16 last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the Russian Federation had created much more modern strike systems that surpass those currently available in the US arsenal.