Chapter 1454 Now that things have come to this, let’s find a scapegoat first

In fact, it was just as Scheer had guessed.

Thanks to the angle advantage of the video broadcast signal, viewers watching the broadcast through the screen can actually notice the missiles at the back earlier than they can on site.

Therefore, before they recovered from the shock, the takeout phone of the pizza shop near Arlington County was almost blown up. At the same time, countless workers were woken up from their sleep by the ringing of the phone, and then rushed to their work places overnight...

But compared to them, the news media that reacted faster were still those who were afraid of being overtaken by others.

At the editorial office of The Times of London, William Cohen, editor-in-chief of the international edition, had just walked into the office and before he had time to sit down, his secretary, who had been waiting beside him, stuffed a proof of the headlines into his hands.

The first thing that catches your eye is a large photo taken by a reporter stationed on the scene in Beijing.

Unlike most of his peers, the photographer did not simply enlarge the frame to make the waverider warhead fill the image as much as possible. Instead, he deliberately chose a shorter focal length and a smaller angle, and then used appropriate post-production color adjustment to make the lineup of only eight vehicles appear to be a large array of vehicles.

If you only look at this photo, the unaware crowd would probably think that China has dispatched an entire missile brigade.

"Not bad……"

Cohen nodded with satisfaction.

This is exactly the effect he most hopes to achieve.

Seeing his boss whose eyes were only on work, the secretary felt a little puzzled.

"Sir, aren't you worried?"

he asked suddenly.

"worry about what?"

Cohen looked up in confusion.

"Of course it's the Chinese hypersonic weapons..."

The secretary's brows were furrowed, and he was obviously worried:

"I mean, although this DF17 looks like a medium-range missile, if the same technology is applied to models with longer range, then wouldn't we be..."

Hearing the other party's concerns, Cohen was stunned at first, then he lowered his head and laughed out loud.

As a media person, and a British media person far away from the Pacific Ocean, he was indeed shocked for a while when he received the call half an hour ago, but he had already put himself in the right position on the way over.

"Cough-cough-"

Cohen cleared his throat and patted the young man on the shoulder:

"Frankly speaking, judging from the world situation, Britain is completely dispensable. We are not even a US missile base..."

The secretary obviously did not expect to receive such a pessimistic answer and was speechless for a long time:

"so……"

Cohen explained:

"I don't know much about this weapon, but since even the Americans haven't equipped it yet, it must be very expensive... The Chinese are very good at calculating and will not aim such an important weapon at us."

After saying this, without waiting for the other party to react, he picked up the proof headline again and cast his eyes on the title part above the photo.

There was a line of words printed in bold black font:

"China's Hypersonic Ambition".

In the following text, the opening paragraph mentions the evaluation given by the Chinese official media on Dongfeng 17 after the military parade:

This is a weapon system that defines tactical scenarios from the source, penetrates enemy defenses, and influences decision-making.

From there, he began to exaggerate the threat from the East, eventually going on for thousands of words, filling up almost the entire page.

Logically speaking, this can be considered a kind of "eight-part essay style" of Western reporting. News written in this format can basically be guaranteed to be neither good nor bad.

But this time, Cohen frowned.

Of course, quite rich content can be derived from this idea, but for readers who have been overwhelmed by the "China threat theory", it may not be very eye-catching.

Moreover, other colleagues must be working frantically now, and their finished works are probably pretty much the same.

In other words, there is a lack of explosive points.

The Times needed a more alarmist headline to stay ahead of its competitors.

After thinking for a moment, he slammed the article in his hand on the table. The "bang" sound scared the secretary.

"Send it back and rewrite it!"

Although it is a rewrite, the former does not have much anger in its tone, but rather suppressed excitement:

"Tell the frontline editor that I want to see the words 'New Cold War' appear in the headline and lead!"

……

The media can certainly write whatever they want, but serious intelligence analysis cannot.

There is very little information about the Dongfeng 17, and most of it was not obtained in the first place. Now, if we want to analyze the limited footage from the National Day military parade, it is nothing but a fool's dream.

In fact, no one was even sure whether the eight missiles that appeared on Chang'an Avenue were real or just models.

The argument over this matter alone lasted for several hours.

Some radical analysts even believe that the DF-17 model may not exist and is a sleight of hand designed to be exposed before the HTV-2.

It wasn't until the next morning, Eastern Time, that a message from the Air Force Space Command finally put an end to all the debate...

The third underground floor of the Pentagon's E Wing.

"Everyone, Director John Raymond of the Space Reconnaissance Center believes that the series of medium- and short-range missiles that China has tested since the second half of last year were uniformly identified as Dongfeng 16s because of their similar hit traces. But now looking back, it is very likely that 4-5 of them involved flight tests of hypersonic aircraft..."

The voice of Carl Miller, director of the Strategic Capabilities Office, seemed to come from an ice cellar.

He tapped the keyboard, and an animation immediately unfolded on the big screen: the waverider warhead "skipped" three times in a row at an altitude of 100 kilometers and a speed of Mach 12. As soon as the AN/TPY-2 radar of the THAAD system aimed its beam at the target, the warhead had already changed its trajectory and hit the runway of Andersen Air Force Base in Guam almost vertically. The red circle of the explosion almost swallowed up half of the airport:

"At the same time, we also conducted several simulated confrontation tests using the design parameters of HTV-2. The result was not surprising. The interception success rate was 0..."

Such a huge intelligence leak naturally caused extremely strong dissatisfaction. For a time, all kinds of civilized words starting with F were flying around, and it was obvious that they were preparing to put all the blame on the Air Force.

But Robert Gates, who was sitting at the head of the conference table, knocked on the table angrily, stopping his subordinates from going back and forth like in a vegetable market:

"Problems in the field of intelligence analysis are no longer worth mentioning..."

He didn't look up, but just stared at the photo on the report in front of him.

The number "DF-17" on the dark blue missile body stung his pupils like a bloodstain:

"The problem now is that we simply can't come up with an equal response..."

Seeing Carl Miller about to say something, Gates waved his hand to stop him:

"You just said that the THAAD system is completely vulnerable to simulated hypersonic weapons, so accelerating the deployment of missile defense systems cannot be considered an effective response..."

As he spoke, he played another video on the big screen.

This is the scene on Capitol Hill in Washington at this moment.

"Right now, the hottest topic on the Internet is a newly coined word called Hypersonic Gap..."

Republican Senator Rand Paul waved his cell phone at the hearing and roared in anger:

"Gentlemen, the American people are having a hard time sleeping because of this. This is the greatest strategic failure since the Sputnik moment!"

Behind him, the projection screen shows the timeline of China and the United States’ hypersonic projects side by side—the tip of China’s arrow has already pierced 2020, while the trajectory of the United States is still hovering around 2010:

"In the field of hypersonic weapons, we are at least 10 years behind the Chinese. Someone must be held accountable for this!"

"..."

Paul's loud Texas accent made everyone's eardrums numb, but they had to take the questions he raised seriously.

"X51A and HTV2 are both research projects that were officially launched several years ago. Even if they are investigated, they should be the people of the Elephant Party. What does it have to do with us?"

Carl Miller spoke angrily.

But no matter what he said, he also knew that it was unreasonable to put the blame on others. The Democratic Party was unlucky enough to catch this opportunity, so they could only find a way out on their own.

But no matter what the considerations are, it is impossible to really force a cabinet leader to resign for this reason.

Can only think of another way.

The meeting room gradually became quiet.

Suddenly, Katherine Morrison, a supervisor from the Global Abnormal Situation Handling Office, sat up straight:

"I suddenly remembered that about three years ago, the previous NASA Administrator Michael Griffin submitted a report..."

The so-called "Global Anomaly Handling Office" was originally an investigation unit for UFOs. Although its director is of a high rank, he is also a marginal role among marginal roles. He comes to the meeting just to make a cameo appearance and usually has no say at all.

But at this point, no one cares about these details and everyone turns their attention to Morrison.

"He suspected that there might be a traitor in our hypersonic weapons research and development department who was bribed by China... and the traitor was of a very high rank!"