Russia's Rush To Develop Hypersonic Weapons Might End In Catastrophe

David Axe

Security, Europe

Testing takes time.

Key point: Russia wants to use nuclear weapons to make up for its conventional inferiority.

Russia has tested a new hypersonic missile that can penetrate any enemy defense, the Kremlin claimed. 

But foreign military planners probably shouldn't panic. The Kremlin might be exaggerating the effectiveness and usefulness of its new weapon.

On Dec. 26, 2018, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced that the Russian military had tested the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle in order to "successfully verify all of its technical parameters," state-owned TASS news agency reported.

"On my instructions the industrial enterprises and the defense ministry have prepared for and carried out the final test of this system," Putin said, according to TASS. "The test was completely successful: all technical parameters were verified."

Avangard is what the U.S. military calls a “hypersonic glide vehicle.” Propelled to high speed by the same kind of rocket that boosts a satellite or a intercontinental-range nuclear warhead, a hypersonic glide vehicle follows a different kind of flight path than other payloads do.

Anything faster than five times the speed of sound qualifies as "hypersonic."

Staying relatively close to Earth — around 300,000 feet up, approximately where the atmosphere ends and space begins — a hypersonic vehicle glides toward its target at many times the speed of sound, potentially performing small maneuvers en route.

In theory a hypersonic glide vehicle can carry a conventional explosive warhead, a nuclear warhead or no warhead at all, instead relying on sheer kinetic force to destroy its target. Its low altitude and high maneuverability compared to a traditional intercontinental ballistic missile could make it harder to intercept.

"We don't have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us," Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2018.