Scott Ritter:

The US remains far behind not only Russia and China in the field of operational hypersonic weapons, but also regional adversaries like North Korea and Iran.

For years now, Donald Trump has been hyping the existence of a “super-fast” missile—something he calls the “super-duper missile” capable of flying “17 times faster” than the nearest competition.

But there is one major problem—the HACM, or the AGM-183A, don’t work.
Despite nearly $2 billion being spent on both systems.

The cancellation of New START would trigger an immediate nuclear arms race. Russia would be compelled to increase the number of warheads on its deployed delivery systems to somewhere around 4,500. The US would fall some 450 warheads short of its planned increase in deployed nuclear warheads, meaning that it would start a new arms race in rough parity with Russia, and immediately fall behind, with no mechanism in place to catch up until at least 2050.

The last thing the US needs right now is a nuclear arms race with Russia.

Russia has mastered hypersonic technology, not only with short- and intermediate-range weapons systems, but also strategic, where the Avangard hypersonic maneuvering warhead has been deployed on several different ICBM systems.

Unlike the US military industrial complex, which has demonstrated that it is incapable of producing a viable new ICBM, the Russians have a vibrant defense industry which has fielded several new ICBM missiles over the past few years, and is currently involved in testing new missiles to ensure that the Russian ICBM force remains modern and viable...
If President Trump fails to provide the leadership necessary to kick-start the kind of robust, viable arms control negotiating team capable of engaging with the Russians with a realistic eye toward resolving the many issues that are linked to a new arms control agreement—issues that go far beyond the relatively simple issue of warhead caps, and tough upon missile defense, China, France, the UK, intermediate and short range missiles, and the complicated mechanism associated with treaty monitoring and verification—the United States will enter a race it is doomed to lose from the very start."

https://scottritter.substack.com/p/trumps-super-duper-delusion