Russia’s New Hypersonic Nuclear Horn (Daniel 7)

Look Out America: Russia’s Hypersonic Avangard Nuclear Missile Is Going Live

December 20, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

Key point: The U.S. withdrawal from the INF agreement has spurred fears that Washington and Moscow will revive the costly and dangerous Cold War nuclear arms race.

Russia’s Avangard hypersonic boost-glide missile is about to operational.

“This missile system is set to go on combat alert in December 2019,” Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced.

A defense industry source said “that the first two UR-100N UTTKh intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) outfitted with the Avangard nuclear boost-glide vehicle would go on experimental combat duty in late November – early December in the Dombarovsky division of the Strategic Missile Force,” according to Russian news agency TASS.

TASS also noted that another defense industry source said in October 2018 that “two Avangard regiments with six silo-based missiles each were due to assume combat duty in Russia.” And in December 2018, Sergei Karakayev, chief of the Strategic Missile Force, said that Avangard be deployed with the Dombarovsky missile division in the Orenburg Region in 2019. Orenburg is a city in southwest Russia near the border with Kazakhstan.

The Avangard is a nuclear-armed glider that travels at hypersonic (faster than Mach 5) speed. Lofted high into the atmosphere atop an ICBM, the glider descends on to its target with such velocity that it will be difficult to intercept the weapon.

“The boost-glide vehicle is capable of flying at over 20 times the speed of sound in the dense layers of the atmosphere, maneuvering by its flight path and its altitude and breaching any anti-missile defense,” said TASS. That last part is key: this is Moscow’s response to U.S. ballistic missile defense, which has stoked Kremlin fears that America will out to neutralize Russia’s nuclear deterrent.

Coincidentally or not, Russia has also just shown Avangard to U.S. inspectors, as required by the provisions of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START. “A U.S. inspection group was shown the Avangard missile system with the hypersonic boost-glide vehicle on the territory of Russia on November 24-26, 2019,” said the Ministry of Defense, which said it permitted the inspection to keep the treaty “viable and effective.”