In sixty minutes or less, weapon systems of the Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) can deliver targeted annihilation for battlefield preparation, as well as on select critical, strategic, and fleeting or high-value targets. That’s faster than I can get a pizza delivered, but that’s why the CPGS strategy has inaugurated Advanced Hypersonic Weapons.

To demonstrate merit that I’m not speculating on this strategic capability, let’s start from at the beginning. The CPGS program left its 1994 conceptualization to become formally articulated in 2001, and citing a U.S. Government Accountability Office report on CPGS,

The Department of Defense (DoD), in its December 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, progressed a conceptual framework for transforming U.S. strategic capabilities to address the new security risks the United States faces. The review proposed a New Triad that would bring together the capabilities of nuclear and conventional (nonnuclear) offensive strike forces, active and passive defenses, a revitalized defense infrastructure, and enhanced command and control, planning, and intelligence capabilities. The synergy realized with the integration of these capabilities, according to DoD officials, would provide the President and other senior decision makers with a wider range of military options against emerging threats while reducing U.S. reliance on the use of nuclear weapons.”

 

The DoD joint-services program fizzled and popped on the back burner of the Pentagon throughout the 2000s as the strategic focus shifted to the Global War on Terrorism. There were also nominal concerns, as the branches could not agree on the how CPGS was to be developed, but they knew it was destined to piggy-back on existing Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles. Conventional strike missiles, which are currently in principle, retrofitted nuclear missiles, sans nuclear warhead. The use of ICBMs presented a clear complication, because the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile would trigger the early warning systems of U.S. antagonists. America’s adversaries who could then easily conclude that a nuclear weapon has been fired, and in effect unknowingly overreact and kick start the apocalypse.

 

In 2010, the project was formally announced to the world as part of the New START Treaty, due to the ICBM launch system of CPGS. However, the U.S. State Department, in a very clear header states, “The New START Treaty does not contain any constraints on current or planned U.S. conventional prompt global strike capability.” The State Department also announced the CPGS future trajectory into, Hypersonic Technology Vehicle, Conventional Strike Missiles, and Advanced Hypersonic Weapons (AHW) – including penetrating bombers.