 A country that has tactical hypersonic systems can produce strategic effects with those systems. That's game-changing. If someone can sink an aircraft carrier or render an airfield unusable with a tactical system, a tactical hypersonic system, then they produce the effect that in some ways is equivalent to using a strategic system. The American way of fighting, we rely on technology, we also rely on our skilled warfighters, but it's that combination of technology and our skilled people that give us that edge. I would argue that's been true since the founding of this nation. That's one of the things that the American warfighter brought to the field of battle from the very beginning of this nation. Hypersonics continues that. Hypersonics says, okay, we know how we've been operating for the last however many years. What are the next technologies that we need to focus on to modernize, change the way we do things? One example that I'll give you, I'll roll back to the first Gulf War when we unleashed stealth technology. It was an amazing revelation and the entire world stood back and watched what we, and especially the United States Air Force and other parts of the military, were able to do with low observable aircraft that essentially were invisible to radar. Well, the world has had a generation to study that and so we need to be thinking about what comes next. I think hypersonics clearly comes next. Stealth, they can't see me. I'm invisible. With hypersonics, they might be able to see me, but they can't stop me and I think that's the next step that we need to be focused on. Put very simply, an adversary no longer needs to have a world-class air force to beat our world-class air force if they have these sorts of technologies. They no longer need to have a world-class navy to beat our world-class navy if they have these sorts of technologies. We've been building hypersonic systems for decades. Hypersonics is a field that was invented basically in the United States. We flew the first hypersonic systems in the late 1940s. The concepts for hypersonic vehicles, it was pretty much developed here. The Russians did some development work, but really it's a field that we invented, that we developed, we did the experiments, we did the principle tests. We developed this technology and then very honestly, we took our foot off the gas. We didn't follow through perhaps as we should have followed through. We didn't continue the programs as we should have continued those programs. And others read what we wrote and watch what we did and read our papers and decided this is a pretty good idea and so ran with it. So today we're faced with two other countries and many countries around the world are developing the technology, but two that we specifically focus upon and they have made no secret of their investments. One is Russia and we know Vladimir Putin has bragged about their hypersonic capabilities and the other is China, but that's the situation that we're in. I would say one of the goals that we have in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering is to first make sure that we're not left behind, but more importantly, we're going to leapfrog those capabilities and we'll do it because again, this is an area we own. This is an area we invented, right? We've got, there are smart people all around the world, but we've got the most innovative minds. We've got the longest history in this field. We've made the investments, not just in the facilities, but in the people. And this is something that we're right now focused on ramping up, you know, industrial base, workforce, making sure that the services are on track to not only meet, but to exceed what peer competitors could possibly deliver. Well, I think there's a realisation within the Air Force that universities are important for developing the next generation of technology that the Air Force will need as we develop new aircraft and new weapons. And I think there's also, the universities are also an important source of the workforce. That's, I think, the real exciting part about hypersonics is, like, a lot of it is new, a lot of it is stuff that hasn't been seen before and stuff that can be very useful in the field, in the industry. There are some incredibly smart, talented people at our universities, right? Our university system is the crown jewel of our S&T enterprise. We want to harness that brain power. We want to produce the people who are going to come work for places like AFRL and go to do our industry partners and go to the universities to help train the next generation. If we do our job right, then God forbid the United States has ever faced with a conflict in the, in the 20s and 30s, we will have given those future fighters the tools they need to make sure that our nation is safe and secure.