Why It Matters
A new Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on hypersonic boost-glide weapons lands at a moment of strategic tension: the Pentagon's budget request for these systems dropped 43 percent from fiscal year 2025 to fiscal year 2026, from $6.9 billion to $3.9 billion, even as Russia and China have already deployed operational versions of the same technology. Congress now faces the pressing question as to whether the United States is keeping pace, falling behind, or simply restructuring its priorities in a competition with no clear finish line.
The Big Picture
What Boost-Glide Technology Actually Does
Hypersonic glide vehicles travel at Mach 5 or faster, roughly one mile per second, but their strategic value is not primarily about speed. Ballistic missiles already move at comparable velocities. What makes boost-glide technology different is maneuverability. After being released from a rocket booster along a flatter-than-normal trajectory, the glide vehicle can change course mid-flight, making it nearly impossible for an adversary to predict its target or direct interceptors toward it.
The United States would likely detect the booster's launch, the report notes, just as it would for any ballistic missile. But it would not be able to predict the vehicle's flight path. That gap between detection and interception is where the strategic risk lies.
Where Each Country Stands
The competitive landscape described in the report is uneven in ways that matter for U.S. defense strategy.
Russia has already activated two SS-19 ballistic missiles equipped with its Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, a nuclear-armed system with onboard countermeasures designed to evade U.S. ballistic missile defenses. That activation was announced on December 27, 2019. President Vladimir Putin has said Russia pursued the system in response to the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. Some U.S. analysts, the report notes, have assessed that Russia could use Avangard as part of a first strike even without U.S. missile defenses in place. Others argue it will be deployed in small numbers and adds little to Russia's existing nuclear posture.
China has operationally deployed the DF-17, a medium-range ballistic missile with a hypersonic glide vehicle thought capable of "extreme maneuvers" during flight. U.S. defense officials have said those maneuvers would allow it to evade U.S. missile defenses. China is also developing the DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missile, which former commander of U.S. Northern Command General Terrence O'Shaughnessy appeared to confirm could carry a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle. According to the Pentagon's 2025 annual report on the Chinese military, China has also developed a bomber-launched version of the YJ-21 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile.
Perhaps most concerning to U.S. planners, China has tested a hypersonic glide vehicle on a fractional orbital bombardment system, a booster that carried the vehicle into orbit before it de-orbited and approached its target. Experts cited in the report assert this type of system could allow China to launch hypersonic missiles over the South Pole, bypassing U.S. early warning assets oriented toward the North Pole and further compressing warning time before a strike.
The United States, by contrast, has no known operationally deployed hypersonic boost-glide system. The Navy, Army, and Air Force each maintain development programs, but the country faces an additional technical hurdle: unlike Russia and China, the United States is not developing hypersonic glide vehicles for use with nuclear warheads. That means U.S. systems must achieve greater accuracy to be effective, making them more technically challenging to build.
The Budget Question
The 43 percent reduction in the Department of Defense's (DOD) hypersonic weapons development budget request, from $6.9 billion in fiscal year 2025 to $3.9 billion in fiscal year 2026, is the sharpest data point in the report that Congress must wrestle with. The department did not provide a topline figure for its fiscal year 2027 request, leaving lawmakers without a predictable trajectory for future spending.
Pentagon officials have stated that hypersonic missile systems could attack priority targets promptly and with improved accuracy without being defeated by adversary air or missile defenses. That stated capability sits in direct tension with a budget that is moving in the opposite direction from the threat assessments the same officials are offering.
Political Stakes
For the Administration
The Trump administration finds itself navigating an inherent contradiction embedded in this report. On one hand, it has made the Golden Dome missile defense initiative a centerpiece of its defense posture. The report directly references Golden Dome as DOD's primary defensive response to hypersonic threats, stating that the department is developing defensive systems, including Golden Dome, to track and engage them. On the other hand, the report notes that "experts disagree on the cost and technological feasibility of this approach," a significant caveat for a program being promoted as a comprehensive shield against exactly the kind of threat hypersonic boost-glide weapons represent.
The administration is simultaneously cutting offensive hypersonic investment and promoting a defensive architecture that experts say may not be technically feasible at the scale envisioned. That combination will invite scrutiny from both defense hawks and budget-focused critics.
The report also references Executive Order 14347, dated September 5, 2025, which reinstated a "Department of War" secondary designation for the Pentagon. That framing signals an assertive defense posture, but the budget numbers in this same report complicate that narrative.
For Congress
The report is explicit that Congress may consider the implications of these systems for authorizations, appropriations, and oversight. That is a direct invitation for committee action, and the budget drop gives appropriators a concrete hook. Members on the Armed Services and Appropriations committees will need to decide whether the fiscal year 2026 reduction reflects a genuine strategic reprioritization or a gap that adversaries could exploit.
The absence of a fiscal year 2027 topline from the Pentagon makes that oversight job harder. Congress is being asked to evaluate a program without a roadmap.
For Democrats
The funding reduction and the unresolved questions about Golden Dome's feasibility give Democrats a line of attack that does not require opposing defense spending broadly. Pointing to a 43 percent cut in hypersonic weapons development while Russia and China field operational systems is a straightforward argument about readiness, not ideology.
For the Public
The report surfaces a debate that has real consequences for anyone trying to assess U.S. national security. Former acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly argued in January 2020 that hypersonic technologies "have already changed the nature of the battlespace" and "can destabilize the global security environment and pose an existential threat to our nation." Others cited in the report push back on that framing, arguing that nuclear-armed ballistic missiles have long posed comparable dangers and that there is nothing fundamentally new about the threat from nuclear-armed hypersonic systems when compared to other nuclear-armed missiles.
The report also raises the possibility of arms control agreements to limit hypersonic deployment, noting that policymakers may consider mechanisms to ban or limit these weapons in order to avoid the crisis instabilities created by their short time of flight. But it immediately flags the obstacle: nations may be unwilling to limit these weapons without corresponding limits on missile and air defenses. Given the current administration's posture toward multilateral arms control, that pathway appears to be constricted.
The Bottom Line
The central tension in this report is not technical — it is strategic and budgetary. The United States has neither deployed an operational hypersonic boost-glide system nor provided Congress with a clear funding trajectory for doing so, while Russia and China have moved past the development phase into deployment. At the same time, the administration's signature defensive response to hypersonic threats, Golden Dome, faces unresolved questions about cost and feasibility that the report does not dismiss.
Congress will need to decide, through the authorization and appropriations process, whether the current investment level reflects a deliberate strategy or a gap that needs closing. The report does not answer that question. It does make clear, however, that the question cannot wait.
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