The Washington Free Beacon:
Russia is working to deploy a revolutionary hypersonic maneuvering strike missile by 2020, according to a Russian defense industry leader.
Boris Obnosov, director of the state-run Tactical Missiles Corp., told a Russian news agency the new hypersonic missile will be capable of penetrating advanced missile defenses and represents a revolutionary advance in military technology.
“It’s obvious that with such speeds—when missiles will be capable of flying through the atmosphere at speeds of seven to 12 times the speed of sound, all [air] defense systems will be weakened considerably,” Obnosov told the Rambler News Service this week.
The disclosure comes as Adm. Cecil Haney, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, warned last month that the threat posed by hypersonic missiles is growing.
“Hyper-glide vehicle research and development are also challenging our planning calculus,” Haney told a conference on missile defense in Alabama. “The ability to find, fix, and track and hold … these types of capabilities are becoming increasingly more difficult. Hyper-glide vehicle technology can complicate our sensing and our defensive approaches.”
Haney said the military must “think about it and look at it in different ways so that, again, we are maximizing [missile defense] sensing to be able to understand what exactly is it going at so we can then look at how do we take it out.”
A Lockheed Martin missile defense expert said last week that the Pentagon is looking at ways to shoot down maneuvering hypersonic missiles. Among the options are an extended-range version of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, called THAAD-ER, and high-powered lasers capable of shooting down missiles before they reach hypersonic speeds of Mach 5 and above.
Obnosov’s comments are among the first public statements about the secret Russian hypersonic missile program. Moscow has kept secret most details on the hypersonic missile program that has been underway for the past several years.
China also is building hypersonic strike vehicles and has conducted seven tests of the DF-ZF high-speed glider. The DF-ZF was tested in April.
The United States is also working on hypersonic missiles and space vehicles. But its programs are said to be smaller and funded at lower levels than those of both Russia and China.
Obnosov said the Tactical Missiles Corp. is responsible for hypersonic missile development, along with a subunit, NPO Mechanical Engineering, and several other defense institutes including Precision Systems and the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology, a major missile research and development center.
The defense industry official said Russian government funding for hypersonic development is not as high as it should be.
“The development of hypersonic technology can be a catalyst for development of the entire industry, the entire national economy as they used to say,” he stated, comparing the development of hypersonics to the launch of the first satellite in 1957. The high-speed vehicles also could have commercial applications.
The first hypersonic missile could be deployed by the early 2020s, with a craft capable of reaching speeds between Mach 6 and Mach 7, or between 4,600 mph and 5,370 mph, Obnosov said.
Such speeds pose technology challenges because of the heat created by high-speed travel through the atmosphere. Controlling hypersonic missiles also is difficult.
Asked if Russia is lagging behind China in developing hypersonic strike vehicles, Obnosov said it is difficult to know because China is keeping details of its hypersonics secret.
Russia is monitoring foreign hypersonic missile developments, he added.
Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon strategic policymaker, said reports from Russia indicate hypersonic missiles will be deployed in multiple basing modes, including surface ships, submarines, and bombers.
