The advent of hypersonic weapons – a broad category covering systems that travel at Mach 5+ including hypersonic boost glide systems, hypersonic cruise missiles and ballistic missiles – has opened a new front in anxieties about national security and defence in the West.
The anxiety is due to a combination of issues: a lack of current, deployed hypersonic weapons capability by NATO member states; acknowledgement that existing interception systems are ineffective against hypersonic targets; and the threat that some hypersonic weapons, designed for conventional warheads, can be interchangeably armed with nuclear capability.
While Russia did not put nuclear warheads on the Oreshnik hypersonic missile it fired at a Ukrainian military facility in November 2024, it did follow nuclear convention when setting it off, in order to jangle nerves: Moscow provided Washington with a 30 minute-notice of its launch, according to Reuters.
Russia’s efforts to ratchet up fear should not be underestimated. In January 2026 at a meeting of the UN Security Council, the US and UK criticised a more recent deployment of the Oreshnik by Russia. At the time, the Guardian reported that James Kariuki, the UK’s acting ambassador to the UN, said the attack threatened “regional and international security and carries significant risk of escalation and miscalculation.”
And a research paper published by the Nuclear Study Group at the Munich Security Conference this month underscored the intention of that latest strike.
In the MSC’s view of the latest long-range allegedly hypersonic missile, “Although the initial strike caused limited physical damage, the employment of a dual-use system with a reported range of up to 5,500 km was widely interpreted as a signal to Ukraine’s Western allies and as part of a broader campaign of psychological warfare,” the authors wrote.
Some primes working on hypersonics, but progress unclear
The UK and other NATO governments have public programmes supporting the development of hypersonic capabilities, and private capital has also started flowing into prototypes.
In the UK, there are two key Ministry of Defence (MOD) procurement frameworks that let suppliers bid for contracts in either countering the threat of hypersonic weapons, or contributing to work that could lead to the building of a sovereign hypersonic missile capability.
The first of these, the framework for Science and Technology Oriented Research and Development in Missile Defence (STORM), manages the delivery of research covering activities to counter threats including hypersonic missiles.
The second, the £1 billion Hypersonic Technologies and Capability Development Framework (HTCDF), is intended to accelerate development of the UK’s hypersonic strike capability and to provide a route to market for future operational elements of hypersonic and adjacent technologies, the government source said.
The UK earlier this month committed £400 million towards two other efforts: the STRATUS programme, a joint effort with France and Italy to develop stealth and high-speed missile variants; and a long-range weapon programme with Germany that stems out of the Trinity House collaboration agreement between the two countries.
Several defence primes have already started working on hypersonic capabilities. Resilience Media approached several of the big names, but only a few responded, and none were able to provide interviews.
The UK’s Rolls-Royce has a project called ‘Reusable Hypersonics’ within its LibertyWorks division based in the US.
While the description on the Rolls-Royce website mainly refers to legacy work on supersonic capabilities, it notes that “Our team continues to look to the future to drive new innovations in high Mach turbines and enable future missions for our warfighters.”
A spokesperson for BAE Systems, the UK’s main defence contractor, told Resilience Media it is “not involved in this area of work.”
Northrop Grumman in the US opened a Hypersonics Capability Center (HCC) in Elkton, Maryland in August 2023. On its web page on hypersonics, the company describes scramjet hypersonic propulsion, hypersonic strike, hypersonic boost glide propulsion, fuzes and warheads, and counter hypersonics.
Meanwhile, on 14 January 2026, the US’s GE Aerospace and Lockheed Martin announced they had “completed a series of engine tests demonstrating the viability of a liquid-fueled rotating detonation ramjet for use in hypersonic missiles.”
‘Europe should have its own sovereign capability’ – UK/German start-up
But if efforts in the U.S. speak of activity at the allied level, the push for more sovereign capabilities is fuelling development in other geographies, too, particularly from a perspective of deterrence.
Some of those efforts are being pursued in government-led, prime-fuelled collaborations. Others are taking the route more often associated with tech companies. Hypersonica, based in the UK and Germany, is one of the venture-backed startups developing hypersonic weapons for the European market.
Earlier this month, it said it had raised $28 million in funding from Plural, General Catalyst and others, and it completed the first test of its hypersonic missile prototype at Andøya Space in Norway, where it “accelerated to speeds exceeding Mach 6 (>7,400 km/h), with a range of over 300 km.”
Speaking before the test, Hypersonica CEO Dr Philipp Kerth told Resilience Media that Russia’s use of hypersonic weapons against Ukraine “deeply affected” him and his co-founder, Dr Marc Ewenz.“Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine started when my co-founder and I were at university and it deeply affected us,” Kerth said. “Their use of hypersonic weapons has furthermore demonstrated the potential of this technology.”
He added that Hypersonica was an early mover and had already committed to developing hypersonic weapons capabilities for Europe, at a time when some in the defence sector might have been more skeptical of the technology.
“Overarchingly however, hypersonic weapons have been independently and correctly identified as a solution to the lack of conventional deterrence systems for Europe,” he said.
“We founded this company and started this work before the European defence sector realised it was as important as we did.”
Accelerated innovation in defence is “no longer optional” for Europe, according to Kerth.
“Hypersonic weapons will transform aerial warfare. Their potential to avoid detection and interception is a turning point for deep strike capability. Europe is at a decisive moment where speed in defence innovation is no longer optional but essential,” he said.
The key switch for many has been the war in Ukraine, which for many, he added, has exposed the technological and capability gap between Europe and its adversaries.
“Europe should have its own sovereign capability,” he said.
Kerth told Resilience Media Hypersonica is engaging with both the German and UK governments, given its connection to the two countries. (Kerth and Ewenz are German but both studied at Oxford and began work on the Hypersonica concepts while there; the startup’s two major offices are in each country.)
“As a company rooted in both Germany and the UK, it is reasonable to assume that we are engaging with both governments,” he said. The Norway test was an important marker of progress both for the startup and to potential buyers. “Delivering our hypersonics to the launchpad is a major milestone in our roadmap and therefore the strongest signal yet that we are a ready and credible partner to European governments.”
UK Government asked ‘What’s the plan?’
US-based Hermeus is one of the startups hoping to see more business out of Europe in the coming years. The company, backed by the likes of Peter Thiel and Founders Fund, In-Q-Tel and the US Air Force, among many others, has been focusing on developing high-speed aircraft “for the national interest.”
With nearly $400 million raised to date, it has three products under development: the Chimera, the Quarterhouse Program, and Darkhorse.
It says the Chimera will be “the world’s first commercially-developed turbine-based combined cycle engine.” It works both at lower speeds and at a ramjet-powered higher speed. The Quarterhouse Program is an unmanned system that includes plans for four aircraft. And it describes Darkhorse as “a multi-mission reusable hypersonic UAS (uncrewed aerial system) designed for defense and national security missions.”
But Hermeus president Zack Shore has been critical of how NATO and its allies – not just in Europe – have responded to the threat at hand, specifically Russia and China pushing ahead on the development of hypersonic defence capabilities.
“China’s testing cadence is orders of magnitude greater than ours,” he said. “When you’re doing this kind of work, you need to fly, you need to go Elon-style, watch the rocket, blow it up, learn something, launch the rocket [again]. That cycle, that iterative development – that is not something the United States has been very good at for a number of reasons to date.”
He added that the US authorities had so far been slow to give financial support to the development of hypersonic weapons capabilities, specifically outside of working with prime contractors.
He added that while the UK does have the HTCDF, “there’s nothing going on.”
“There’s no money. There’s like a billion pounds,” he said referring to the budget allocated to the HTCDF, “But where is the money? I don’t know. Nobody’s ever seen it. What are you guys doing with it? What’s the plan?”
He said that it might be a wait-and-see approach that’s being taken.
“It does feel a lot like they’re kind of waiting to see what happens [in the US] to determine what they want to do [in the UK],” he said. “I get that actually. It’s not crazy. But we in the US haven’t solved this yet, so it’s sort of like this knock-on effect that everybody ends up waiting.”
