Hypersonic Missiles – a Political Multipurpose Weapon
ZBN Analysis no. 4 (43) / 2019
15 March 2019
Hypersonic weapons have recently become a very popular leitmotif of the debates concerning national security of many nation-states and international security as a whole. Hypersonics technology gets attention mainly because it is often supposed to alter the existing strategic balance. Therefore, on the one hand, the new weapons systems have been loudly advertised by Russia which claims to have achieved a virtual invincibility thanks to this wunderwaffe. On the other hand, in the U.S., and to a lesser extent in the other Western countries, there is a chorus of alarming voices calling for higher funding and quicker pace of research and development (R&D) efforts to develop their own hypersonic weapons and to create capabilities to counter the enemy’s systems of that sort. In addition, China has its own vast and secretive weapons development program, hypersonic missiles included. It is, therefore, worth to review this issue and try to grasp a real impact of the new but steadily maturing technologies on international security.
Photo credit: Youtube / МинобороныРоссии
