Hypersonic Missiles Trigger New US-Russia Arms Race

Russia’s successful test of a ship-launched hypersonic surface-to-surface missile, the ‘Tsirkon’ on October 7, 2020 and the previous deployment of its ‘Avangrad’ hypersonic glide weapon with inter-continental range may have given it an edge in missile systems of the future.

For once, the United States may be late to the party in terms of developing and deploying hypersonic missiles that travel at five or more times above the speed of sound and maneuver around defensive projectiles making them theoretically impossible to intercept by current generation anti-missile systems.

Dramatic footage of the ‘Tsirkon’ missile taking off from a silo of a Russian warship was followed by chest thumping by President Putin and defence minister Sergei Shoigu that their hypersonic missiles have no match.