US says will watch China’s arms progress after hypersonic missile reports

Tbilisi, Oct 18 (EFE).- The United States will closely monitor China’s weapons program after Beijing allegedly tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile, defense secretary Lloyd Austin said Monday.

Chinese authorities denied the reports, saying instead that they had carried out a routine spacecraft test.

Austin told a press conference in Tbilisi, one of his stops on a tour of the Black Sea region, that the US would monitor China’s hi-tech weapon development, although he did not say whether he believed the report in the Financial Times that the Asian super power had tested a hypersonic missile in August that circled the globe through low-orbit space.

Hypersonic missiles or vehicles have a capability of traveling five times faster than the speed of sound, some 6,177 kilometers per hour.

The low-flying guided missiles are extremely hard to detect.

The US in late September said it had successfully tested a Rayheon hypersonic missile.

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin described his country’s Avangard hypersonic missile as “the weapon of the future.”

North Korea claims that it tested a hypersonic missile in late September. EFE

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