Russia uses hypersonic missiles in Ukraine

Russian MiG-31K armed with a Kinzhal hypersonic missile
(Image credit: Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Russian forces used hypersonic missiles, which can travel at 10 times the speed of sound, in western Ukraine on Friday, NBC News reported.

"The Kinzhal aviation missile system with hypersonic aeroballistic missiles destroyed a large underground warehouse containing missiles and aviation ammunition in the village of Deliatyn in the Ivano-Frankivsk region," the Russian Defense Ministry announced Saturday.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Michael Puttré, writing for Discourse, explained that hypersonic missiles "are more maneuverable and harder to detect than earlier high-speed weapons, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, and can travel at more than five times the speed of sound."

Russia and China have already added hypersonic missiles to their arsenals, while the United States and several other countries are working to develop them.

"[A] hypersonic weapon with a high-Mach speed and a great ability to maneuver would defeat any U.S. anti-missile system that depends on tracking inbound missiles flying on a predictable course," Puttré argued. Others, however, expressed skepticism as to whether hypersonic weapons were really so revolutionary.

Ryan Cooper wrote for The Week that "while a hypersonic missile would be nearly impossible to shoot down, that is already true of ICBMs," that "a realistic massed attack of multiple-warhead [ICBMs] would be impossible to defend against," and that even in the event of a successful hypersonic nuclear attack, the U.S. would retain second strike capability in the form of its nuclear-armed submarines.

Cooper argued that fear about hypersonic missiles is being whipped up solely because "the military-industrial complex needs a new bogeyman to justify the preposterously bloated and wasteful Pentagon budget."

Grayson Quay

Grayson Quay was the weekend editor at TheWeek.com. His writing has also been published in National Review, the Pittsburgh Post-GazetteModern AgeThe American ConservativeThe Spectator World, and other outlets. Grayson earned his M.A. from Georgetown University in 2019.