The Chinese military is developing at a "stunning" pace, according to one of the United States' most powerful military generals, who called the Asian nation's test of a hypersonic missile earlier this month "very concerning".
China's use of the weapon was confirmed on Thursday by General Mark Milley, the chairman of the US Joint Chief of Staff, who would not speak in detail about the test but said it was a "significant event" and close to a "Sputnik moment". That's a reference to the 1957 launch of a Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union which created fears the US was being beaten in the space race.
The hypersonic missile has been reported to be nuclear-capable and able to be directed into space to orbit the Earth before flying towards a target. It could therefore possibly evade defence systems. China denies it was a missile that was launched and instead a spacecraft.
General John Hyten, the outgoing Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Friday said it was useful to refer to China as a "pacing threat" as the pace the country was moving "is stunning".
"The pace they're moving and the trajectory they're on will surpass Russia and the United States if we don't do something to change it," he told reporters. "It will happen. So I think we have to do something."
Hyten said the United States needed to work with its allies to stem China's progress. The US last month announced a defence pact with the United Kingdom and Australia with a central focus on the Indo-Pacific region. While the trio didn't specifically name China as being a key challenge they wanted to surmount, their rhetoric over the last year suggests just that.
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Calling the hypersonic missile test "very concerning", Hyten said Russia was still the most imminent threat to the US due to its 1500 deployed nuclear weapons. He noted that China has about just 20 percent of that.
Relations between China and Taiwan, an island economy China claims as its own, have continued to plummet this year, with Beijing sending hundreds of fighters into the Taiwanese air defence zone in recent weeks. China has also expressed anger that key officials in the EU are soon set to meet with Taiwan's Foreign Minister.
The United States supplies Taiwan with arms and has promised to defend it in the case China decides to invade, something that military generals believe is possible in the coming years. On Tuesday, Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen confirmed US troops were present in Taiwan for training.
Hyten said that China's construction of missiles was only partially linked to Taiwan, but mostly they're "meant for the United States of America".
"We have to assume that, and we have to plan for that, and we have to be ready for that, and that's the position they're putting us in with the weapons they're building."
He encouraged his successor to focus on "speed" and not let the "brutal" bureaucracy get in the way.
Last week, the US unsuccessfully tested a hypersonic glide vehicle. Hyten said the US needed to stop viewing failure as "bad".
"Nope, failure is part of the learning process. And if you want to get back to speed, you better figure out how to put speed back into [sic] and that means taking risk and that means learning from failures and that means failing fast and moving fast."
Hyten noted that current North Korean leader Kim Jong Un didn't kill his scientists or engineers if they failed, unlike the dictator's father, but instead "decided to encourage it and let them learn by failing".
"And they did. So the 118th biggest economy in the world - the 118th - has built an ICBM nuclear capability because they test and fail and understand risk."
