Russia's Hypersonic Nuke Is a Warning to America

David Axe

Security,

"Avangard launches atop a rocket before separating and gliding toward its target at an altitude just below the upper limit of the atmosphere and a velocity 20 times the speed of sound or faster. No existing U.S. missile defense system can target a vehicle moving that fast at such a relatively low altitude for a strategic weapon. But some think otherwise--that's the problem. 

Russian president Vladimir Putin is right. The Kremlin's new, nuclear-armed Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle can defeat any U.S. defense.

The real danger, however, is that some senior U.S. officials seem to believe American defenses such as the U.S. Navy's SM-3 and the Army's Ground-Based Midcourse Defense missile-interceptor can stop a weapon such as Avangard.

Bad advice could encourage a reckless U.S. president to pursue a risky foreign policy while wrongly taking comfort that the Pentagon's missile-defense systems protect the United States from nuclear retaliation.

That's the latest warning from Ted Postol, a scientist and nuclear-weapons expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Statements made by Vladimir Putin clearly and unambiguously indicate that he understands that U.S. missile defenses currently have no capabilities to deal with existing Russian ballistic missiles, yet alone something like a hypersonic-like vehicle."

"What concerns Putin is that U.S. political and military leadership is so out of touch and so politicized with regard to the missile defense issue that a future president might actually think that they could get away with striking Russian nuclear forces and then using missile defenses to defend against a straggling Russian counterattack," Postol explained.

Avangard launches atop a rocket before separating and gliding toward its target at an altitude just below the upper limit of the atmosphere and a velocity 20 times the speed of sound or faster.

No existing U.S. missile defense system can target a vehicle moving that fast at such a relatively low altitude for a strategic weapon. "We don't have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us," U.S. Air Force general John Hyten, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, said in March 2018.