has six known hypersonic programs, divided among the air force, army and navy. Russia and China now claim to each have deployed at least one such system. military officials stated that hypersonic weapons, which China was also developing, would “ revolutionize warfare.” The Pentagon, which had been working on similar systems for a decade and a half, ramped up its own efforts last year Congress dedicated $3.2 billion to the research and development of hypersonic weapons and defenses. In an assessment after Putin’s speech, U.S. Approaching at such low altitudes, these weapons would avoid detection by ground-based radar systems until close to their target, making them more difficult to stop. In contrast, hypersonic weapons would fly deep within the atmosphere most of the time, using lift generated by airflow to weave around and try to evade interceptors. Intercontinental ballistic missiles, which follow an elliptical path into space before plunging down toward their target, reach speeds above Mach 20, but they have predictable trajectories for most of their flight and typically can maneuver only briefly, after they reenter the atmosphere.
The weapons involved in this competition are touted not only for their speed but also for their stealth and maneuverability. Putin’s announcement, accompanied by intimidating simulations of the new weapons snaking across the globe at unbelievable speeds, added fuel to a dangerous new arms race. Speeds between Mach 1 and Mach 5 are supersonic, whereas those exceeding Mach 5 are hypersonic.) According to him, one of these, called Avangard, was a highly maneuverable missile that could glide thousands of kilometers with an initial speed greater than Mach 20, making it “absolutely invulnerable to any air or missile defense system.” “So listen now!”Īmong other systems, Russia was developing new hypersonic weapons, Putin declared: missiles that fly long distances through the atmosphere at more than five times the speed of sound, or faster than Mach 5. He had warned Americans that Russia would be forced to respond to these deployments, Putin told his audience, but they had refused to listen.
had developed and begun building a network of defenses to intercept long-range ballistic missiles, threatening Russia’s ability to deter attacks on its homeland. Having rejected the decades-long arms-control agreement, the U.S.
In a televised address to Russia’s Federal Assembly in 2018, President Vladimir Putin announced an escalation of the ongoing arms race with the U.S., which had withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002.
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