The Army must take risks to modernize, the Futures Command chief said, and the modernization effort will survive the inevitable failures along the way.

“Long-range precision fires… would provide us the capability (to) either, for example, support the Air Force by suppressing enemy air defenses at hundreds upon hundreds of miles or support the Navy by engaging enemy surface ships at great distances as well,” said Army Secretary Mark Esper. But those examples are two distinctly different missions, each most relevant to a different theater of war.

We explore the possibilities, from cutting-edge hypersonics and 1,000-mile cannon to repackaged Tomahawk cruise missiles and updated Pershing ballstic missiles.

While the Strategic Long-Range Cannon will hit targets at ranges comparable to bleeding-edge hypersonics missiles, Army officials emphasized the cannon is built on proven principles, just bigger.

There are loopholes in the 1987 accord that newer technologies like hypersonics might shoot through, independent arms control experts told me. But, they warned, you might end up nitpicking the treaty to death.

One Army weapon would be a hypersonic missile, tearing through missile defenses at Mach 5-plus to kill critical hardened targets such as command bunkers. The other would use a gun barrel to launch cheaper, slower missiles at larger numbers of softer targets like radars and missile launchers.