A Hypersonic Arms Race

Aaron Stein 0:08

Hello and welcome to the Arms Control Wong podcast. My name is Aaron Stein. I'm a contributor to the Arms Control Wong blog. I'm also an associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute in London and a PhD candidate at King's College.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:21

And I'm Jeffrey Lewis. I'm the founding publisher of Arms Control 1, and I'm the director of the East Asia Arms Recreation Program at the James Martin Center for Arms Recreation Studies. And we have a friend with us today. My friend James Acton is a senior associate at the Times New Dalmatian, the author of Silver Bullet, Asking the Right Questions about Conventional Props and Global Strike.

James Acton 0:41

Hello, James. Hi, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey 0:44

How are you? I'm all right. The reason that we have James on the podcast today is because there have been two tests of hypersonic weapons systems in the past month, one by China and one by the United States. Both of the tests failed, and they were very public failures. So we thought we would have James on to talk about some of the work that he's done and some of the work that he's been doing in collaboration with us at CNS.

So, James, what the heck is a hypersonic weapons system? Yeah, tell us.

James 1:12

Well, hypersonic literally means something that goes faster than five times the speed of sound. Actually, that's not a literal meaning. That's its meaning. It's something that goes five times faster than the speed of sound. And actually, hypersonic weapons are not that new. Ballistic missiles are hypersonic weapons. But there is a lot of renewed interest at the moment in conventionally armed hypersonic weapons.

And there's two different technological pathways that are being pursued right now. One, which we're going to be talking about today, are these boost glide weapons. So they are launched by big rockets, just like a ballistic missile is. That's fantastic. Sorry? That's the boost part? That's the boost part. But then rather than arcing high above the atmosphere, they're put on a trajectory to reenter the atmosphere as soon as possible, and then they just glide to the target at extremely fast speeds and potentially over very long ranges.

For the record, there's also a lot of research being done in hypersonic cruise missiles, which are just like normal cruise missiles, but they go a lot faster.

Jeffrey 2:29

And so, Aaron, we haven't been keeping you in the loop on this, but we have been fussing around a little bit with this failed Chinese test and trying to figure out where it is and what that suggests about the system. James, did you want to – you were the one who contacted me because you noticed the pictures there.

James 2:51

Yeah, well, China tested a hypersonic glider back in January, which the Pentagon has termed the WU-14. And it's kind of interesting now that Chinese net sources are calling it by the US name as well. And then Bill Gertz reported earlier this week now that there had been another test of the Chinese glider on the 7th of August.

What was interesting in this very alarmist article were pictures of something that had crashed that was reportedly connected with the test. And what immediately caught my eye was that generally speaking, you don't intend for rocket stages or any kind of debris from the test to fall close to an inhabited area. But Chinese people have been taking pictures of whatever it was that crashed, which suggested that stuff hadn't quite gone to plan, which was not something that at the time was being reported in the Bill Gertz article that was, you know, predictably trying to play up the success and significance.

If I can...

Jeffrey 4:01

If I can interrupt you, James. So Aaron, there's this wonderful moment where James is like shocked that Chinese people see a giant orange cloud from a crash, which is clearly like a toxic cloud. And instead of running the other way, they drive toward it taking pictures.

Aaron 4:16

Well, it's really nice because it gives us people who do open source analysis pictures to look at. We can then draw conclusions about that.

Jeffrey 4:22

Seriously, though, if you want to come up onto a smoldering crater of rocket fuel, you should probably be wearing a bunny suit.

Aaron 4:28

Yeah, or go the other way. I mean, I think we should tell all people, go the other way. Don't take pictures for our benefit.

Jeffrey 4:33

Yeah, that's right.

James 4:36

This is an arms control wonk public service announcement.

Jeffrey 4:40

Do not pop hydrazine or rocket propellants.

Aaron 4:44

But because they did, we were able, or you guys at least, and I'm soon going to learn about, come up with some pretty cool, I guess, hypotheses about what was going on with the test.

Jeffrey 4:55

Yeah, I'm sorry, I interrupted you, James. Let's let him finish the thought and talk about GeoMobile.

James 4:59

No, no, I mean, I was just going to hand over to you at that point, Jeffrey, because what we had was a series of photos showing something that had crashed, clouds of red plumes, and some distinguishable buildings visible in all this imagery.

Jeffrey 5:21

Yeah, so this is great. So the... The crash site, there are a bunch of cell phone pictures of it, and there are basically four kinds of pictures. There are some pictures from the site itself that show the debris, and they clearly show the first stage of a rocket, and it has characters for China Aerospace on it. So you can tell that it's a rocket that's crashed.

There are three other types of pictures. One are pictures of the cloud from a distance with some buildings in the front. And they're really weird looking buildings. One is a picture of the cloud from a dock where there are like boats. And then the third is a picture of the same cloud kind of down the road in some cars parking.

Aaron 6:13

Where did you guys get these pictures from? A lot of people like to know where they come from.

Jeffrey 6:17

Yeah, people started posting them online and they kind of ripped through Chinese social media, although it seems that the Chinese government is trying to take them down.

Aaron 6:25

So this was on Chinese social media, not US social media?

Jeffrey 6:28

Well, initially, yeah.

James 6:31

Initially on Chinese social media, but this is why the Chinese government trying to take these photos down is a losing battle because once they're out there, they're out there and they're getting repeated.

Jeffrey 6:43

What was interesting... Oh, go ahead.

James 6:46

No, no. What I was about to say was that the Chinese social media sites... Had a very cryptic description of the place where the crash took place, which was, I mean, Jeffrey, you might be able to remember some of the names that were being thrown around here, which were not names that could easily be tracked down initially on the internet.

This is a remote era of Inner Mongolia.

Jeffrey 7:13

Yeah, it's Inner Mongolia. So all of the place names are Mongolian. Which then get turned into Chinese, which then get transliterated into English. Oh, man. And so we eventually... We eventually figured out the way I ended up doing it was I focused on the county and then started looking at cities in the county and we were able to kind of get reasonably close.

But what was so interesting about pictures is because one of them showed water, right?

James 7:44

Well, this is the Gobi desert, so there just aren't that many spots that have boat docks.

Jeffrey 7:53

And so we started looking around and trying to imagine like a little piece of He's going to have a lake with a dock in the middle of the Gobi Desert, right? So it turns out that there is a resort under construction called the Bulong Hu, which is like Ploth Lake, hot spring resort. And it was really hard because the photographs are not so good in Google Earth.

They're older and it's newly constructed.

Aaron 8:25

Yeah.

Jeffrey 8:25

But there is one relatively recent picture in Bing Maps, which saves us the problem of having to go out and buy a picture. And once we did that, it pretty clearly, once we had the website for the resort, so we had pictures of the resort, we had the cell phone camera pictures of the buildings, and then we had the overhead, it was super clear that the person who took the pictures was at the resort.

James 8:52

And this place is weird.

Jeffrey 8:53

I mean, this is the middle of the Gobi Desert. I've stayed at weird Chinese resorts before, but this one is right up there.

James 9:00

There is this enormous dome in the middle of the resort. There are these kind of almost Moroccan-styled pinnacled towers around the place.

Aaron 9:10

As one would expect in Mongolia.

James 9:13

Exactly.

Jeffrey 9:14

You have very specific expectations for Mongolia. I did not expect that. Yeah, it was a really, it's a really weird resort. We couldn't match the boat dock, but that's because it was clear that it's, it looks to me like it's a temporary dock because it's, you know, this is a really fancy resort, but this boat dock is being held up by like, I don't know if it's being held up or if they're to like soften the bump of the boats, but there are like used tires along the dock.

So it looks pretty temporary. And so it doesn't match either the schematic of Resort and it's not visible in the satellite photographs but you can kind of figure out where the boat dock would be and so that's plausible and I was able to outside so basically this person is at the resort they hear the crash they take the picture from the resort with the buildings or from the boat dock I think they were on the dock.

Then they walked up to the buildings. They walked to their car. They drove out the gate. They took another picture down the road with the car's park. And then they drove to the crash site. You can kind of trace their path all the way along. So we ended up, I don't know, James, how confident did you feel?

I'd say like we're probably, we probably know the location of the crash site within a couple of kilometers.

James 10:35

Yeah, I feel pretty good about that.

Jeffrey 10:38

Which then allows you to do lots of really interesting stuff because James gets a copy of the notice to airmen closing airspace in China and is able to do trajectory analysis, figure out where was the thing supposed to go compared to where it ended up actually crashing. That's a good story.

James 10:57

Yeah, I mean, we managed to find these notification to airmen on KKTT's blog. Shout out also to Zaria, the space website who tweeted about this previously. The Chinese had declared two keep out zones related to the test. Now, there's almost certainly more keep out zones that weren't declared. The Chinese apparently a lot of Chinese airspace is controlled by the military.

So if there's keep so if debris from the rocket were to fall in military controlled airspace where there weren't any civilian flights, then you might not declare a keep out zone in that area. So we have we have an incomplete picture of what the rocket was intending to do. But I think we probably have the second stage drop zone.

Probably the second stage drop zone, could be the shroud, could be the first stage, but probably the second stage drop zone.

Jeffrey 12:01

And that was like 600 kilometers downrange or something?

James 12:04

Yeah, that was 600 kilometers downrange. When the U.S. tests these things, the U.S. sends the rocket up almost vertically before pitching it over very quickly. So in the U.S. test, you get the first stage drop zone incredibly close to the launch site, you know, within 100 kilometers of the launch site. If China's tested in the same way, and it may not, but if it has tested in the same way, then the drop zone we have is probably the second stage drop zone.

And then much further downrange, about 1700 kilometers away, is a smaller zone. And generally speaking, drop zones get larger the further away from the launch site you go, because there's more uncertainty about where the thing is going to land. So the fact that there's something smaller, 1700 kilometers away suggests it's where the target was intent. It was the target.

It was where the glider was intended to land. And presumably that's smaller because this is a guided system that the Chinese were intending to maneuver in onto the target.

Jeffrey 13:12

And let me say, Aaron, one of the things I thought was really great about doing it this way is in the original news report, the launch site was given as a Jiuquan satellite launch center. Space Launch Center. But based on the NOTAMs and where the debris crash and pictures posted by locals, it's clear that that part of the initial report is false, that it was launched from a different site.

It was launched from a place called Paiyuan, which is kind of a nice... Yeah, go ahead, James.

James 13:53

Well, I know, as I say, I mean, the launch from Joe Chan never made sense anyway, because if you launch from Joe Chan and then you know where the crash site is, it meant the glider had to be going from west to east, i.e. Towards the populated bit of eastern China. Which you'd never do.

Jeffrey 14:12

If it was a hypersonic test.

James 14:14

If it was a hypersonic test, that's right.

Jeffrey 14:16

So to me, that's what was so interesting, is when, if you knew the crash site, if it had come from Jochuan, it looks like it's going to the east, so it looks like a spacewalk. But nobody launches to the West because the Earth turns the other way. And so once you know that they're launching West, it becomes clear that it's a launch.

But it's much more likely that it's a hypersonic test.

Aaron 14:42

Right. So the open source allows you to confirm, at least in your mind, to make it more clear that it actually was a hypersonic test. And you also got to fact check the article, which is why we like open source so much.

James 14:54

Right. And sorry, there was one other important point about the drop zones to add, which is the crash site is slightly outside the what we think is the second stage drop zone, which is significant because it means, you know, that that's yet more proof the test was a failure because whatever it is. The debris wasn't falling within the designated drop zone, which does suggest that there was a booster failure.

Aaron 15:27

Right, so the glide vehicle didn't go as far as it was supposed to go.

James 15:31

Well, probably. I mean, it's hard to say much definitively, but if it's a booster failure, it suggests that the glide vehicle was never actually released at all. The test failed even before the glide vehicle could be released.

Aaron 15:47

Yeah, and you guys talked about it a little bit earlier, but even the cloud, the red cloud, sort of gives something away as well. Maybe it differentiates the Chinese test from the U.S. test, which we'll talk about in a few minutes.

Jeffrey 16:01

Yeah, it's a real head-scratcher because the orangey-red cloud would suggest that it was a liquid propellant rocket. Which is not what the U.S. uses, not what I would expect for a weapons system. So, James, did you have any... Like, James and I have been puzzling about that. I like to check in with him periodically when... What's going on there, man?

James 16:22

Well, because there have certainly been, I think rumors are the best way to describe it, that the W14 was launched from a DF-21, which is a solid fuel booster. So it was a real surprise to find pretty conclusive evidence that it had been launched from a liquid fuel booster. I mean, I can think of two possibilities which are not mutually exclusive.

One of them is, you know, for a given payload, you can get more speed with a liquid fuel booster. So it's possible that the glider is simply too heavy to be launched by a solid fuel booster. And a liquid fuel booster is necessary to give the necessary speed. The other possibility, and this is something that we've been kicking around, is that a guy called Lee Fuel from NASIC.

You have to remind me what NASIC stands for.

Jeffrey 17:13

National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Madison Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. One of our two intelligence centers that focus on this. You know, there's a great, like, you know, there's a great, like, bureaucratic turf war between Dayton and folks in, I guess it's Huntsville.

James 17:37

No, I didn't know that, actually.

Jeffrey 17:39

Oh, yeah, no, you don't want to step into the middle of that, right? You don't want to say, like, Jason Heck or, I think the other one is, like, Miss Horowitz. You know what? You don't want to get in the middle of that. It's all like Jetson charts. Anyway, go ahead.

James 17:52

Well, I mean, if anybody from Huntsville is listening and wants to give us more information about the problems with the NASIC assessment, then find our email addresses on the website. But Lee Fuel had testified that the Chinese glider program was associated with their nuclear program, that they thought the ultimate goal was to deliver nuclear weapons. Which is different from the US where the glider program is a conventional program.

So it's also possible that it's being launched by a liquid fuel booster because the ultimate goal is to stick a nuclear armed glider on top of a liquid fueled nuclear armed missile of some description. But this is I mean, you know, this is obviously pretty speculative. It's very, very hard to say anything hard and fast about this.

Jeffrey 18:43

Should we go on and talk about the polarity?

Aaron 18:46

Yeah, no, I was going to say, I think this is the key point of what you're bringing up is a contrast between the U.S. programs. I mean, even the speculation is that this could be for a nuclear program where the U.S. is conventional and the glider, or at least the booster that may have launched the glider, is liquid-fueled, whereas the U.S. program is solid-fueled, if I've done my homework correctly.

So I think this leads us exactly to what you were saying, Jeffrey, is the U.S. test and our recent failure test. Which I think the failure is much different than the Chinese test. And I'm curious what that actually shows about the state of the two programs.

Jeffrey 19:22

I don't know if it's much different, right? I mean, it's in both cases. Why? Well, you should start by saying, although the U.S. has been a little bit more forthcoming about the information, you can really see what happened because there are photographs of a totally devastated launch complex.

Aaron 19:40

Right. More open source.

Jeffrey 19:42

Yeah. That shows that the I mean, the what, James, did the announcement say the there was the failure was a few seconds into flight?

James 19:52

I've heard it's been reported it was four seconds into flight. I'm not sure I've actually seen the Pentagon statement saying that media reporting that it was four seconds. But it's clear from the photos that when that rocket went, it went pretty soon after launch.

Jeffrey 20:11

Oh, so Aaron sent me – I think it was – gosh, what was that? It was like the Alaska – oh, what was the site you sent me?

Aaron 20:17

I want to say it was the Miner's News, but I'm trying to remember what it was.

Jeffrey 20:21

It's a trade publication. It has a dark picture showing the explosion, which is incredibly close to the launch gantry. And then obviously there are the daylight pictures showing all of the damage. But you can also – I'm pretty... I don't know. It's hard. It's a blurry picture. But I think you can see the hypersonic vehicle being ejected from the explosion.

You know, getting thrown. Seriously? Yeah. I hadn't seen...

Aaron 20:54

There's a piece of debris that's coming off if you're looking at it towards the right side of it that looks like it... I'm not sure it's the hypersonic vehicle, but it's something that's been ejected rather quickly at about a 45-degree angle from the top of the gantry.

Jeffrey 21:08

You know, something strong enough to survive the explosion and get thrown, which, you know, the hypersonic vehicle is probably pretty good.

James 21:14

Right.

Jeffrey 21:15

Yeah.

James 21:16

So, in any case, you know, the rocket... Flew up within a few seconds of launch. And you can see this tremendous damage to the space launch site in Kodiak, Alaska. I mean, the footage is just extraordinary.

Jeffrey 21:36

By the way, I'd be remiss if I didn't say I love to hate the acronym for our hypersonic system. It's FALCON. You guys know what FALCON is?

James 21:52

Tell us. Force application and launch from CONUS.

Jeffrey 21:55

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Aaron 22:00

Force application and launch from CONUS.

Jeffrey 22:01

Almost as bad as Dinosaur. S-O-A-R. The manned 60s. That was manned, right? They were going to put a person in the dinosaur?

James 22:09

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, no. The dinosaur was a manned vehicle. Explain this to the listeners. Well, so the U.S. is... The US has been interested... Actually, I should even take a step back. Boost Glide technology was first conceived by an Austrian aeronautical engineer, Ugen Sanger, and his mathematician wife, Irene Brecht.

Jeffrey 22:36

By the way, Sanger is... Well... Yeah, Sanger's an interesting character. Actually, I will save that for a future podcast. Anyway, go ahead. Yeah, Sanger, right.

James 22:51

I actually don't know a lot about him, so I look forward to hearing that. But the Nazis sponsored boost glide research during the Second World War, which never got any further than a very long report on the subject. The US picked it up and during the very late 50s and early 60s, developed this concept for this manned hypersonic boost glide intercontinental bomber.

Called The Dinosaur, which stood for dynamic soaring. This went as far as having a test. I think a static model was built before the plug was pulled on the project, I think in about 63.

Jeffrey 23:38

Do you know there is dinosaur fan fiction?

James 23:43

Yeah, I think I told you about that.

Jeffrey 23:46

What? I missed it. I just came across this hilarious picture showing up.

James 23:50

Mike Miles flies the dinosaur. I have a copy of Mike Miles flies the dinosaur. Oh, my gosh. It's amazing.

Aaron 23:58

We're going to whack this into the podcast. I'm curious, though, guys. It's like, A, do we know any – Explanation for perhaps why the U.S. test failed. And if not, I think it's worth explaining the differences between the two programs. I mean, you've hinted it already. I mean, one, the Chinese may be trying to put a nuclear weapon on the front of theirs, whereas the U.S. is strictly conventional.

And I think we need to talk about, like, I guess some of the fears associated, at least maybe on the Chinese, then we should talk about the Russians a little bit, too, about the conventional tests. Of a U.S. hypersonic program and how that relates to nuclear policy.

James 24:38

Well, I mean, in terms of why the test failed, The U.S. is using something called the Strategic Target System Boosters, STARS, which is essentially a Polaris A3 missile. And it's an old missile. This is old technology. And, you know, this missile does not have a good history. It's failed at least once before when it was used to launch a target for a ballistic missile defense test.

And the targets Missile failed on that occasion. So I think this missile has now failed at least two out of about 14 launches as far as I could track down the advanced hypersonic weapon, which is the system the US is doing, was tested successfully in November 2011. Over a distance of just under 4,000 kilometers, which is a lot longer than the Chinese system.

So there's been some media reporting, I won't mention Bill Gertz by name, that suggests that the Chinese vehicle can go twice as fast as the U.S. vehicle. That's almost certainly not true. The U.S. thing is designed to go over twice as far as the Chinese thing, so it's almost certainly traveling a lot faster. And Aaron, as you say, it has sparked incredible concern in both Russia and China, which are also working on these technologies themselves.

I mean, Jeffrey, I know you've looked at Chinese attitudes towards this. Why don't you talk a bit about it?

Jeffrey 26:05

I will. The first question was whether we have Carl bleep out that person's name that you said you wouldn't mention.

Aaron 26:12

No, no, I don't think so.

Jeffrey 26:15

Well, so I think there are kind of two models of drivers for Chinese defense programs. And I go back and forth for this one. You know, on the one hand, I think the Chinese care a lot about the ability of their military Nuclear weapons to penetrate missile defenses, and they spend time and money to make sure that they develop countermeasures and do all of the requisite testing to make sure that they have a certain level of survivability.

So there's a kind of strategic rationale for them doing this. But I also think, and this is the conversation we had in the podcast About kill technology, that if the United States develops a technology like a hypersonic weapon system, the Chinese are going to do exactly the same thing, make sure they're not missing anything, see what it's all about, see if they can do it, and all of the kind of questions of how do you use this technology, it's not necessary in my experience for the Chinese to answer those questions before they start a research program like this.

If the U.S. is doing it, that's usually... Good enough. And so, you know, there's this kind of interesting question of is this being driven primarily by concern about survivability of the nuclear forces. Or is it primarily about modeling? Somebody asked me about this on Twitter the other day. Actually, they asked me an unrelated question, but I misinterpreted it because I was tired.

So I answered the question I wish they had asked. And I think it's both. And in a way, it's sort of overdetermined. But my sense, and James, you've been the person who's really made this argument, I think, most compellingly. Although I know you'll give credit to Laura and other people who've done a lot of the research, but I think you really put it together.

The Chinese are really worried about conventions. I think they're worried about conventional strike in a way that they weren't. They were worried about missile defense, but they are really freaked out about conventional strike systems.

Aaron 28:33

James, before you answer that, I think, are there the same dynamics that underpin the Russian decision-making about this as well? Are they really concerned about the capabilities of advanced conventional strike?

James 28:46

Well, I mean, listen, I first off don't claim to be, you know, China or Russia expert. So a lot of what I'm doing is just reading what they're writing. And I don't claim to have any particular insights onto either state's procurement models. I mean, you know, I think, Jeffrey, your description of the internal dynamics of the Chinese procurement model makes a lot of sense to me.

And I don't think I can add much to that. What I've noticed through conversations with experts and officials in both countries, through reading a lot of what's been written, some of it hadn't previously been translated into English, in both states is this very, very deep fear about conventional weapons. Now, one fear that comes up in both states is the idea of conventional counterforce, that the US could use high precision conventional weapons.

To attack Chinese and Russian nuclear forces. And then the US could use ballistic missile defense to mop up anything that can't be destroyed in a first strike and hence be able to disarm Russia and China without ever crossing the nuclear threshold. Now, I should say in both countries, these fears are extended much more broadly, as far as I can tell, than merely these hypersonic prompt weapons.

Both countries seem to worry a lot about U.S. conventional cruise missiles, which is something that, you know, Americans find the idea of a conventional first strike using cruise missiles even crazier than a conventional first strike using hypothetical hypersonic weapons. But it seems to be out there. I think that's a common fear that's shared by both countries. I think I've now managed to dissect Russian fears more than Chinese fears.

You get this whole range of concerns in Russia, everything from we're getting left behind in this critical area of military technology. Through to decapitation, through to what happens if the US puts tactical nuclear warheads on these things. Almost every concern that one can imagine is there in the Russian literature. I don't necessarily feel that I know the full extent of the Chinese literature on this subject nearly so well as the Russian literature, but both countries do have this deep fear of conventional counterforce.

Aaron 31:17

Yeah, and I think we should pick up there. All three countries, and we haven't talked much about the Russian program, but all three countries have some program going on, some sort of hypersonic program going on. How will this be destabilizing? I mean, the thing that you hear the most is that states can't differentiate between, say, what would be a nuclear-armed missile versus a hypersonic conventionally armed missile.

But is there more to that? I mean, is it not just... What we would expect is just not being able to pick up the differences on launch, but are these things inherently destabilizing because they could be conventional and not cross the nuclear threshold? Are we in uncharted territory here?

Jeffrey 31:57

If only had someone had written a book subtitled Asking the Right Questions about Conventional Prompt Global Strength.

Aaron 32:02

You know, teeing it up like a softball.

James 32:06

Which people can download free of charge from the Carnegie website. I mean, it's a really complex, knotty set of issues there. And, you know, I should start by saying I'm not necessarily against the US developing these systems. I'm not necessarily for it. I just think this hasn't been nearly discussed or analyzed enough. This issue of, maybe it's worth looking at this slightly historically.

Back in 2006, I think it was, the Bush administration announced plans to take Nuclear warheads off some Trident D5 missiles and to replace them with conventional warheads, which was the so-called conventional Trident modification. And Congress didn't like that idea. Nominally, ostensibly, because it was worried that Russia might mistake the launch of a conventional Trident for a nuclear Trident and launch a nuclear response.

One senior official in the Bush administration who was charged with, who was involved with this project, thought the real reason was that Congress, quote, didn't trust the Bush administration with sharp objects. And the conventional the ambiguity problem was kind of an excuse. One thing I point out is. Ambiguity rarely gets brought up in Russia or China. This is the US saying what it thinks Russia and China ought to worry about, which is a different set of fears from what Russia and China actually do worry about.

Second thing I'd say is this is a complicated issue about the extent to which boost glide systems solve or exacerbate the ambiguity problem. The argument that the Department of Defense has made is that because they fly in non-ballistic trajectories, Russia or China could be confident, could distinguish them from ballistic missiles and hence be able to be confident that they weren't nuclear armed.

That's a difficult argument because actually it's very hard to track a boost glide system in flight, which is one of the military advantages. So what Russia would see, you know, if it had a satellite trained in the right position, was it would see the launch of one of these systems. And then it would probably see nothing at all because they're flying too low to be monitored by radar.

So it wouldn't be seeing something in a non-ballistic trajectory. It would be seeing nothing at all. And it's not clear to me whether that's more or less worrying from a Russian perspective. Another issue you have is that the trajectory of a ballistic missile is entirely predictable. You know where it's going to land. If the U.S. was to fire a ballistic missile at Iran, say, Russia could track that missile and would know that it wasn't landing in Russia.

If the U.S. fired a boost glide system in the direction of Iran, because they're maneuverable, Russia might be worrying that this system that it couldn't track was actually heading towards Russia. So, you know, my personal opinion, and this is kind of controversial, but is, I think there's a very good case to be made that boost glide systems are actually more destabilizing than conventionally armed ballistic missiles are.

But actually, you know, my bigger criticism is that these issues are just not being thought through in any holistic way.

Jeffrey 35:43

You know, my sort of take on that, which is very similar to Picks up on that notion that you do have to think about this problem, not just sort of more, but that what we have is an issue of very difficult context. And what I mean by that is what really matters is the strategic relationship that the United States has with China, the strategic relationship that the United States has with China.

Russia, and whether the systems are destabilizing or not ends up depending, I think, on those details. One of the things I've been fascinated by in terms of the way the U.S. program has evolved has been both the Evolution of the rationales for the program, but also the interpretation of the program outside. So my recollection, and James, tell me if this is yours as well, is when people started talking about conventional Trident modification, the emphasis was on soft, fleeting targets.

And it really was Targets that we couldn't get to with conventional forces quickly, but that we wouldn't use a nuclear weapon against, right? And so there was this idea that sort of terrorist training camps and things like that might, oh, I shouldn't say training camps, but terrorists at training camps who might come and go would be Would be interesting.

So it wasn't that these things were replacing nuclear weapons. It's that they were filling a mission that nuclear weapons couldn't fill that was sort of a gap between conventional forces that took a while to get someplace and nuclear weapons that got there fast but were unusable for other reasons.

Aaron 37:28

Let me jump in there before you answer. How has that mission now evolved? Because of the prevalence now of a different type of conventional weapon system that gives you long loiter times, the ability to look and shoot all at the same time, which is drones.

Jeffrey 37:42

Well, let me start with, let me finish that thought. Because over time then, folks like General Cartwright, who used to be the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, started talking about anti-satellite systems in central China that would be very hard to get to. So sort of arguably immune from the drone solution. And so there has been this kind of change in the rationale.

But on the outside, people have always talked about the conventional systems as though they might replace nuclear weapons. That they might be a way to do nuclear missions with conventional. I think that this is why I want James' opinion about that. My sense is that's what the Russians and the Chinese are picking up on, and that's what they're fundamentally concerned about.

What's interesting is whether their concern is reasonable or not is hard to say because there are clearly people in the United States who favor nuclear, Conventional strike systems for those reasons, even if those are not the reasons that are given for the support of the programs today?

James 38:45

So, I mean, my take on this is this has always been a program that's been driven by technology rather than strategy. The philosophy has always been we have this really cool technology, so let's develop it and then we'll work out what to do with it. And so there's never been a driving rationale in the program. And all of the possible rationales that exist have existed right from the beginning in 2003 of the program.

You know, Jeffrey, you say correctly that counterterrorism was talked about publicly as being an important rationale. You found a great document that's on the blog that, you know, has demonstrates the US military was thinking about a counter ASAP mission in China for this kind of in the mid 2000s. There's evidence that. The U.S. was thinking about this for kicking down the door of Chinese anti-access area denial capabilities around that time as well.

You know, attacking Iranian or North Korean ICBMs. You know, all of these missions have been there all along. But this is a program that's been driven by technology rather than by a clear sense of mission. And I think, you know, if one of the first things DOD needs to do is to start articulating what this weapon is for, and then we can have a discussion about are there alternatives that can do the job more effectively?

Are there alternatives that can do the job more cheaply rather than just procuring this without having a clearly defined mission in mind?

Aaron 40:23

Yeah, no, I mean, these are all like serious issues that we need to talk about. But, I mean, I don't think we can solve them here on this podcast. But there's certainly things that I think you're bringing up that have yet to be worked out. I think you discuss in your book as well, in your Carnegie paper, about the issues that we have to unpack and work through.

So I think we can wrap up there. I mean –

Jeffrey 40:48

No, it's not a dour note. James, this is our big thing. We always try to end on a not super depressing note. I think that's pretty positive.

Aaron 40:57

It is a positive note. It gives us something to do as we move forward. I want to thank everybody. Thank you guys for joining and thank everybody for listening. It's been a lot of fun. Thanks a lot and have a good day.