This is one of the many military effects of the war in Ukraine. While Russia carried out, in mid-March, the first operational firing of a missile claimed to be hypersonic, the American Department of Defense revealed on Tuesday May 10 that Moscow had fired at least ten or twelve other missiles of this type. since the beginning of the conflict, “mainly on military targets”. An announcement that feeds reflections on a revival of armament programs around these weapons, mainly in the United States, but also in the United Kingdom, or more discreetly, in France.
On March 19, Russia caused a stir by claiming to have used for the first time, the day before, a missile called “Kinjal”, launched from a fighter plane, to destroy an underground weapons warehouse located in the west from Ukraine. A shot that had been confirmed, a few days later, by the United States, then by European sources. Many experts had seen it as a pure show of force exercise, without much tactical interest. The confirmation of these ten new firings, some of which may have taken place around mid-April, in eastern and southern Ukraine, therefore comes despite everything to rekindle the interest of a certain number of staffs for this hypervelocity technology.
Engaged for a long time in five to six development programs for this type of missile, the United States is the one who hides the least. While 15 billion dollars (14 billion euros) are earmarked by the Pentagon for hypersonics between 2015 and 2024, the American agency for advanced defense research projects (Darpa) announced on May 9 , that it was seeking to obtain an additional $60 million for its 2023 budget, in order to mature new technological bricks linked to these missiles, which are very complex and very expensive to develop. Unlike Russia, the United States is still in the testing phase.
“Unpredictable trajectory”
On April 5, as part of the Aukus alliance, which since November 2021 has brought together the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, London and Canberra in turn publicly positioned themselves in the hypersonic race. Beyond the common program of nuclear-powered submarines which had led to the termination of a French contract for the sale of ships to Australia, the new allies declared, by means of a press release, to be engaged in “a new trilateral cooperation on hypersonic and counter-hypersonic”. An announcement that is very much a posting, but which is significant of Western fears vis-à-vis these weapons that no missile defense today appears capable of countering.
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Source: Lemonde
