Executive Director John Tierney was quoted in an NPR article about North Korea’s recent flurry of missile tests.
John Tierney, a former Massachusetts representative who now serves as the executive director for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, calls hypersonics “shrug worthy,” adopting a term coined by writer Fred Kaplan in a column in Slate last year following up Gen. Milley’s “Sputnik moment” remark.
“It’s shrug worthy by objective standards,” Tierney tells NPR. “But of course, it’s very useful to people in the defense industry and the military to hype it up, because that’s how you get more money in the budget.”
Tierney cautions that Pyongyang’s claims may be exaggerated and suspects that the real value for North Korea to hype hypersonic weapons is propaganda, not military efficacy. Read more
