The New and Improved Missle Gap

Rand Corp's concept of a SCRAMJET cruise missile

Are you wondering why Mr Yuge invited Mr. Putin to Washington for a visit?  US Person was too, until he found the answer in one Russian word: kinzhal, which means dagger.  It is a dagger against which the US has no effective defense and it alters the delicate balance of terror between the two superpowers.  Mr. Putin recently bragged about the effectiveness of Russian weapons to the press.  What he had in mind was the successful testing of Russia's new hypersonic missile named Kinzhal.  The third known test of the air to ground device was carried out in July on a target five hundred miles away.  It will probably be operational by 2020 according to US intelligence estimates.  Mr. Putin said in a speech to his people, "We have run ahead of the competition. No one has precision hypersonic weapons; others are planning to start testing them within the next 1 to 2 years, and we already have them on duty."

SA 40N6 range: 236 miles, speed: 1190m/s

US intelligence also says a hypersonic missile system has been launched twelve times from a MIG-31, and work is underway to mount it on a strategic bomber.  If successful, it will give the Russian a strategic edge comparable to that which the United States exploited in the 1950's.  According to Gen. John Hyten of Strategic Command who testified before the Senate Armed Services committee in March, "We don't have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us."  Hypersonic weapons use speed in excess of Mach 5 to avoid detection and interception. Conventional jet engines can operate up to Mach 3 or 4, but not in excess of that due to airflow problems.  A supersonic combustion ramjet (SCRAMJET) can operate between Mach 5 and 15.  The weapons are also highly maneuverable--they do not follow a ballistic path like conventional ICBMs, thus making them extremely difficult to intercept and destroy. The US and China are testing such systems, but are apparently far behind Russian development.

Of the two types of SCRAMJET weapons, Russia's glide vehicle called Avangard will be ready for deployment by 2020. Development has been underway for three decades. The cruise missile version, which uses powered flight all the way to its target, has previously crashed each time it was tested.  The glide vehicle is carried by an ICBM into space and uses gravitational potential energy to reach its target.  It was successfully tested in 2016, and can carry a nuclear warhead--in addition to the destructive power of its kinetic energy--at one mile per second.  These weapons will ignite another expensive arms race unless they are controlled by mutual agreement.  Even the $11.5 billion already allocated for the Missile Defense Agency, the largest amount ever, may not be enough to fully modernize U.S. missile defense systems.  The Empire R US*.

*Turkey, an ostensible NATO ally, recently purchased Russian state-of-the-art mobile air defense system, the SA-400, in a deal worth more than ₤1.8 billion.  Reputedly the system can hit a soccer ball traveling more than the speed of sound, but it cannot be integrated into NATO military architecture, which is a key feature of the western military alliance..