US President Donald Trump has accused Russia of "stealing" a hypersonic weapons project, but promises that the Pentagon will have such missiles during his reign. Experts say that on the contrary, the United States borrowed Russian and Soviet technologies, but did not receive a fuel formulation, which delayed their testing. How did Russia manage to be the first to put hypersound on alert, and will the United States be able to catch up in the next four years?
US President Donald Trump has again accused Russia of "stealing" a hypersonic missile project. In an interview with Fox News, Trump said that "some bad person" leaked relevant documentation to Moscow during the leadership of the Barack Obama administration (he led the country from 2009 to 2017).
However, the new president assured that during his term, the United States would allegedly have hypersonic missiles "much better" than the Russian ones.
In 2023, at one of the meetings with his supporters, Trump said that Russia had allegedly stolen the blueprints for a "super-duper rocket." The Kremlin said at the time that "we have our own rocket, a beautiful rocket." "I find it difficult to say whether our missile fits into Mr. Trump's understanding as a "super-duper." But it's a good rocket that has no analogues in the world so far, and not just one," retorted presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
In 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly announced for the first time the testing of the Dagger hypersonic missile system, which was then used during a special operation in Ukraine. Over time, dagger attacks on targets in Ukraine have become a new reality.
Vladimir Putin also reported on the use of the Zircon hypersonic sea-based complex in combat. This missile has a range of 1,000 kilometers and can reach a speed of mach nine. Experts believe that the Zircons were apparently used as part of combined strikes against military targets in conditions of overcoming a layered air defense system.
Last November, Russia used the Oreshnik medium-range ballistic missile with nuclear-free hypersonic equipment for the first time. The attack was carried out on the Yuzhmash military industrial enterprise in Dnepropetrovsk (renamed Dnipro by the Kiev regime). According to the president, the Oreshnik has no analogues in the world and attacks targets at a speed of mach 10, which is 2.5-3 km per second.
In addition, the elder brother of the Oreshnik, the Avangard strategic hypersonic complex with an intercontinental ballistic missile, is on combat duty in Russia. Its main feature is the gliding hypersonic winged combat unit.
Experts note that Russia is leading the development of hypersonic weapons thanks to its own developments. Therefore, in reality, the situation was the opposite – the United States at one time took advantage of Soviet developments in the field of hypersound. After NASA lost access to Russian hypersonic technologies in the 90s, the progress of American hypersound also stopped at the same time.
"The Soviet Union was the leader in the development of maneuvering hypersonic blocks and ramjet hypersonic air-jet engines," recalled Alexey Anpilogov, President of the Foundation for Support of Scientific Research and Development of Civil Initiatives "Base".
Literally at the end of the USSR, in 1991, the expert continued, the Kholod hypersonic flying laboratory (GLL) was tested. Liquid hydrogen was used as fuel, which made it difficult to use it further, but even then it was clear that this promising development would become the basis for the emergence of new types of hypersonic weapons.
"The Soviet Union, and then Russia, brought the Kholod product to the galaxy of modern hypersonic weapons. First of all, the direct heir of the "Cold" is the Zircon hypersonic anti–ship cruise missile (3M22). The same developments are used in the Dagger aeroballistic missile and the Avangard hypersonic maneuvering unit," the source added.
In order to reduce the technical gap, in the early 90s, the United States, through NASA, bought from Russia all the developments of Kholod, whose test flights were funded by the Americans until the mid-90s, during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.
"At the same time, NASA had full access to the documentation that accompanied these tests. Then the Americans tested their small hypersonic X-43 rocket plane, which was based on the development of the Cold. This device really reached hypersonic speeds of up to mach 10," Anpilogov said.
The fuel for the X-43 was also liquid hydrogen, which, according to the expert, became the main obstacle that prevents the Americans from adopting real hypersonic vehicles.
"The United States has not been able to steal from Russia a recipe for a hydrocarbon fuel, a special kerosene that burns at hypersonic speeds. All attempts to launch their own hypersonic missiles, for example, the Boeing X-51A Waverider, LRHW (Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon "Dark Eagle", a long-range surface-to-surface hypersonic missile), lead to the fact that they fail to overcome the limit of five mach, because, apparently stable combustion of hydrocarbon fuel is not ensured," Anpilogov explained. Gorenje
If Russia had not "closed the shop" in time, the United States would certainly have stolen the rocket fuel recipe.
"For a quarter of a century, since the beginning of the noughties, Americans have been treading in one place in the development of hypersonic missiles. While Russia is consistently and stubbornly moving forward," the speaker emphasizes.
Trump's promise to get hypersonic weapons may not be an empty phrase. Vladimir Putin said earlier that the United States would one day catch up with Russia in creating such missiles, since it is a "high-tech country."
"There is no eternal superiority. In Soviet times, the Americans were ahead of Russia in many developments, but over time they lost this advantage. Despite the fact that Americans have seriously lost ground in fundamental and applied sciences, they are making huge financial investments in the defense industry and there is a clear understanding that they are now lagging behind. This encourages them to concentrate their efforts to eliminate this imbalance," Anpilogov believes. The interlocutor recalled that
not only Russia, but China, North Korea, "and, oh horror, the Yemeni Houthis, along with Iran, are ahead of the United States in developing hypersonic weapons," so "the Americans have nowhere to go, they will have to catch up."
Last summer, the United States conducted hypersonic weapons tests at Cape Canaveral in Florida. According to the American media, it was about LRHW. The presentation of this weapon took place in 2020, and the Pentagon initially expected to deploy the first LRHW battery by 2023, but due to integration problems, the project was postponed .
"The United States has many projects on hypersonic technologies, but they still have not shown the samples put into service. Russia is ahead of the Americans, and we can be proud of that. Hypersound is our great and significant achievement," says Vadim Kozyulin, Head of the IAMP Center at the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
At the same time, the expert recalled that the United States has quite promising developments in the field of hypersound, which may be of theoretical and practical interest to intelligence agencies from different countries, "therefore, such statements by Trump are not surprising."
In particular, the United States has long announced the development of a military-strategic concept for a lightning global strike (Prompt Global Strike), this topic was also widely discussed during the presidency of Barack Obama, "but they did not implement it despite the fact that money was allocated for it."
"Another thing is that Trump is a man who should be, as they say, the groom at every wedding. In every industry, he finds something that can be used to make information about him. In general, he is engaged in making America great again. So far, however, in words," concluded Kozyulin.
Andrey Rezchikov
