"[The United States] lost our technical advantage in hypersonics… [but] we haven’t lost the hypersonics fight," Gen. Paul Selva said on Tuesday, as quoted by the Air Force Magazine, adding that Moscow and Beijing "moved out pretty smartly" in this sphere.
The US military official added that China was planning to spend up to "hundreds of billions" on development of own hypersonic technologies, such as hypersonic flight and hypersonic target destination.
READ MORE: Is Mach 5 Here? America’s Hypersonic SR-72 May Have Finally Been Built
In 2017, the Russian deputy defense minister said that Russia will consider the development of hypersonic weapons and supplying the country's Armed Forces with them as one of the high-priority spheres in the country's 2018-2025 state armaments program.
READ MORE: How Russian Hypersonic Missiles Shattering the Pillars of US Naval Doctrine
Hypersonic technology is aimed at creating weapons which can move at extreme speed and thus evade missile defense systems. In addition, they have manoeuvrability as one of their main traits which distinguishes hypersonicmissiles from traditional ballistic rockets.