President Donald Trump took a swipe at Russia and former President Barack Obama during his speech at West Point’s commencement ceremony on Saturday and claimed that the United States had invented the hypersonic missile and that it had been “stolen” by adversaries.
Why It Matters
Hypersonic weapons, which reach top speeds multiple times of the speed of sound, have proven to be a pacing challenge for the U.S. as China demonstrated the capability to develop and utilize such weapons in recent years. A test in 2022 by Beijing caught U.S. military command by surprise, according to reports by the Financial Times.
Military command had for years suggested that the U.S. needed to invest not only in hypersonic weapons but also hypersonic defenses. They routinely cite China as a pacing challenge, which means that the U.S. has a gap with Beijing, but that gap is rapidly closing.
In November 2024, Russia demonstrated the capabilities of its own hypersonic missile with an attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, going on television shortly afterwards to boast about the weapons capabilities. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed the Oreshnik missile hit Mach 10 and that it is immune to any missile defense system.
What To Know
Trump gave the commencement address at the 2025 West Point graduation ceremony in New York, with the bulk of his address focusing on the U.S. Army and the academy’s many achievements.
One notable claim Trump made during his speech focused on hypersonic weapons, which he mentioned in relation to a project completed by eight West Point cadets in which they designed and launched a hypersonic rocket to an altitude of just under 150 kilometers (roughly 93 miles).
“Eight cadets here today took on the challenge of designing their own hypersonic rocket,” Trump said. “Oh, we can use you building them right now. You know, we had ours stolen. We are the designer of it. We had it stolen during the Obama administration. They saw—you know who stole it? The Russians stole it. Something bad happened.”
The president added: “But we’re now, we’re the designer of it. We’re now building them, and lots of them, and earlier this year, they launched it into space, setting a world record for amateur rocketry. Can’t get you in there fast enough.”
The cadets participated in the SPEAR program which started in 2018 and is “one of the most ambitious undergraduate rocketry programs in the nation,” according to West Point.
The academy describes the problem as an initiative that provides cadets with “real-world experience in high-tech combat environments,” aiming to “foster understanding of the Department of Defense’s capabilities.”
Russia has demonstrated the use of a hypersonic weapon, but the Pentagon determined the Oreshnik missile was an experimental type of ballistic missile based on Russia’s RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
In January, just days after taking office for his second term, Trump accused Russia of stealing the designs for their rockets from the U.S., telling Fox News host Sean Hannity that “some bad person gave them the designs.”
“Russia stole the design, they got it from us,” Trump said, but he said the U.S. is developing “super hypersonic missiles…which is even a step better.” The president offered no evidence to back up this claim.
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Praise for the Army: ‘I Rebuilt It’
Trump discussed his efforts to remake and improve upon the military, citing his increased budget of about $1 trillion, and talking about how he “rebuilt” the Army.
“Every cadet on the field before me should savor this morning, because this is a day that you will never, ever forget in a few moments, you will become graduates of the most elite and storied military academy in human history, and you will become officers in the greatest and most powerful Army the world has ever known. And I know because I rebuilt that Army, and I rebuilt the military,” Trump said.
“And we rebuilt it like nobody has ever rebuilt it before, in my first term,” he added.
According to the Trump White House Archives, which detail aspects of his first term, Trump revitalized the defense industrial base, secured pay increases for troops, and created the Space Force, expanding the military’s scope and operations.
This included $2.2 trillion in spending over his first four years, with $738 billion spent in 2020; modernizing the nuclear and missile defenses; and upgrading cyber defenses by elevating Cyber Command to a major warfighting command.
According to Newsweek reporting at the time, however, the military received pay increases every year, ranging from 1 to 2.9 percent, with the last year missing a pay increase occurring in 1983 because a change of date for when that would occur.
A report from Politico in 2020 credited Trump with overseeing “historic increases in defense budgets,” installing a number of defense industry insiders to top Pentagon positions and making a major push to sell more American weapons overseas, including more than $55.6 billion in foreign weapon sales in 2018, an increase of $20 billion over his first year in office.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.
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