RFE/RL:
In March 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled six nuclear-capable weapons and has said they have no equivalents anywhere in the world.
“Understand that everything I have said today is not a bluff,” he said at the time.
And with both the United States and Russia announcing this month that they will withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a new era of missile development could be in the cards.
Putin says the world has nothing like Russia’s newest missiles. Is he right? Here’s what we now know, one year later:
Avangard is a hypersonic glide vehicle designed to be carried by an intercontinental missile. Once launched, it’s designed to sail on top of the atmosphere and is supposed to be able to reach speeds up to Mach 20. (That’s 20 times the speed of sound.)
