MOSCOW: The world’s first hypersonic missile with intercontinental range became operational on Friday following years of tests, Russia’s defence minister said.
Sergei Shoigu informed President Vladimir Putin that the first missile unit equipped with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle had entered combat duty, the Defence Ministry said.
Putin first unveiled the Avangard among other prospective weapons systems in his state-of-the-nation address in March 2018, noting that its ability to make sharp manoeuvres on its way to a target would render missile defence useless.
“It heads to target like a meteorite, like a fireball,” he said at the time.
The military said that the Avangard is capable of flying 27 times faster than the speed of sound. That works out to about 33,300 kilometres per hour, though tests so far have produced speeds of about 12,000kph.
Putin described the Avangard’s creation as a technological breakthrough comparable to the 1957 Soviet launch of the first satellite.
The Russian leader noted that Avangard was designed using new composite materials to withstand temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Celsius, resulting from a flight through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.
Earlier this week, Putin emphasised that Russia is the only country armed with hypersonic weapons. For the first time in history, he said, Russia was now leading the world in developing an entire new class of weapons, unlike in the past when it was catching up with the United States.
In December 2018, the Avangard was launched from the Dombarovskiy missile base in the southern Urals and successfully hit a practice target on the Kura shooting range on Kamchatka, 6,000 kilometres away.
Russian media reports indicated that the Avangard will first be mounted on Soviet-built RS-18B intercontinental ballistic missiles, code-named SS-19 by NATO. It is expected to be fitted to the prospective Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile after it becomes operational.
US officials have talked about putting a layer of sensors in space to more quickly detect enemy missiles, particularly hypersonic weapons. The administration also plans to study the idea of basing interceptors in space, so the US can strike incoming enemy missiles during the first minutes of flight when the booster engines are still burning.
The Pentagon also has been working on the development of hypersonic weapons, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in August that he believes “it’s probably a matter of a couple of years” before the US has one.
