"We now have the greatest, most modern military in the history of our country. We have brand new fighter jets, brand new bombers, brand new missiles and rockets. We have hypersonic and hydrosonic [missiles], you know what hydrosonic is? Water. We have them all. We have missiles that go seven times faster than any missile in the world", Trump said on Sunday.
Russian and Chinese demonstrations of new hypersonic missiles in recent years have prompted the United States to step up the development of its own versions. Back in May, Trump said that the United States was developing a hypersonic missile — to which he sometimes mistakenly refers as "hydrosonic" — that was 17 times faster than any other US missile and in October, the US president said that the country had already developed a hypersonic missile.
Also touted by the president as a "super duper" missile, an unarmed prototype of a hypersonic glide vehicle was successfully tested in March at the Pacific Missile Range facility in Hawaii, according to the Pentagon. The Defence Department aims at securing a deployable hypersonic missile by 2023.
