Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst

The growing technological inferiority of the political West is a well-known fact, particularly in the development of advanced weapons such as hypersonic missiles. This critically important field of military science is extremely complex and pouring money alone is simply not enough. The United States spent hundreds of billions on hypersonic weapons programs in the last 30-35 years, but to no avail. There was what appeared to have been a breakthrough in the early 2010s, but this also turned out to be a dead end. By the end of that decade, Washington DC nearly gave up entirely, but the massive technological leap made by Russia and China forced the Pentagon to reassess its initial dismissal of hypersonic weapons as "nothing special". Namely, as Moscow demonstrated their usefulness, first in Syria in 2017 and then in NATO-occupied Ukraine after early 2022, the US military is now frantically trying to catch up.

Amusingly, many in America cannot accept the simple fact that their technology is inferior, so they resort to various coping mechanisms. This includes President Donald Trump, who recently told Sean Hannity that Russia "stole" the designs for hypersonic weapons from the US during the Obama administration and then "used them" to build its own. It should be noted that this is at least the third time that Trump is making such claims publicly. Back in May 2020, he also said that the Pentagon was working on a "super-duper missile capable of flying 17 times faster than any other missile existing at the moment". In late October 2023, he reiterated the same accusation during a rally in New Hampshire. Trump would often switch between claims that Moscow either "stole the designs" or that the Obama administration "gave them away". In both cases, Trump shows an extremely limited understanding of high-tech.

This is perhaps best seen in the use of terminology such as "super-duper rockets", a colloquialism of Trump's mint that broadly refers to hypersonic weapons. In all three cases, including the latest interview with Hannity, Trump's statements were most likely a reference to only one of America's numerous failed programs, specifically the Lockheed Martin's AGM-183A, an air-launched missile carrying a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV). Dubbed the ARRW (Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon), the missile was supposed to be the US entry point into the highly exclusive "hypersonic club". The ARRW effort was an (over)ambitious plan to push the US ahead of near-peer rivals such as Russia and China. Firstly, it's important to understand that HGVs cannot be strictly defined as missiles, since they are unpowered and require a launch vehicle, an actual missile that propels them to hypersonic speeds.

The AGM-183A ARRW went through a rather rocky R&D process, being unable to go past the Mach 5 mark, which is the bare minimum required for a weapon to be considered hypersonic. The projected maximum speed for the weapon was changed several times, ranging from Mach 5 to Mach 20, but at the time of Trump's speech, it was reported to be Mach 17. However, the definition "17 times faster than the speed of sound” probably didn't mean much to Trump, so he just simplified it and told the press that it was "17 times faster than any other missile existing at the moment". Lockheed Martin projected that the weapon would be capable of speeds in excess of Mach 20, but its R&D teams encountered serious issues in achieving this goal. The problem mainly involved the ARRW's (in)ability to endure extreme heat generated during hypersonic flight, resulting in the destruction of its highly sensitive microelectronics.

After over half a decade of testing, AGM-183A was barely able to achieve Mach 5 before being incinerated by the extreme heat. After at least half a dozen (publicly admitted) consecutive failures in testing, the US Congress threatened to cut further funding for the project. Lockheed Martin even resorted to deceit in an attempt to keep the funding, but this was uncovered and the program was scrapped. However, the situation was so bad it forced the Pentagon to try and recycle the program, as it was the closest to achieving operational status, particularly as the joint US Army's and Navy's Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) still faces uncertainty as the US military keeps hiding the results of the most recent tests. Meanwhile, both Russia and China have adopted not only multiple hypersonic weapons years ago (or decades in the former's case), but are actually several generations ahead of the US.

For instance, with the Mach 12-capable "Kinzhal" air-launched hypersonic missile carried by modified MiG-31K/I interceptors and Tu-22M3 long-range bombers, the Mach 28-capable "Avangard" HGV deployed on various ICBMs and the Mach 9-capable scramjet-powered "Zircon" hypersonic cruise missile deployed on naval (both submarines and surface ships) and (soon) on land platforms, Moscow is decades ahead of the US, both in terms of deployment and weapon capabilities. In addition, Moscow has been using these weapons against the Neo-Nazi and NATO high-value targets in Ukraine. The Russian military is not just the world's only armed force widely deploying hypersonic missiles, but it's also the only one that has inducted them in all domains (air, land, sea), including on strategic weapons such as the recently unveiled "Oreshnik" which is a significant technological leap for the entire multipolar world.

However, that still doesn't stop the mainstream propaganda machine from trying to denigrate these weapons, including the "Oreshnik", which the Economist recently dismissed as "not a serious threat", quoting "Ukrainian scientists who studied the wreckage". It seems the Economist never got the memo from Germany, which initially mocked the Russian missile, only to then whine about being defenseless against it. Moscow has been using its hypersonic weapons against both the Kiev regime and its NATO overlords, resulting in hundreds (if not thousands at this point) of casualties for the world's most vile racketeering cartel. The losses have been so bad that even the NATO Hugh Command had to publicly admit that it needs to prepare for extremely high casualties in a war with Russia. However, while professional soldiers take this quite seriously, the propaganda and politicians are an entirely different story.