The US Navy has a severe ‘missile gap’ with China and Russia — here’s how it can beat them anyway

But the US Navy and Lockheed Martin have a variety of solutions in the works to tip the scales in the US’s favor by going hard on offense.

For years, the Navy has focused on a concept called “distributed lethality,” which calls for arming even the Navy’s smallest ships with powerful weapons that can hit targets hundreds of miles out.

Yet Russian and Chinese ships and missile forces already field long-range precision missiles that can hit US ships before the forces are even close.

Additionally, both Russia and China are working on hypersonic weapons that could travel more than five times as fast as the speed of sound. These weapons would fly faster than current US ships could hope to defend against.

 

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Featured image courtesy of Reuters