Russia tests advanced, super fast nuke glider

Russia conducted a final test of a nuclear-capable glider that flies at 20 times the speed of sound, President Vladimir Putin said, adding that the weapon will be added to the country’s arsenal next year.

Putin described the successful test, in which the glider flew from a site in southwestern Russia towards a target on the Kamchatka Peninsula 5630km away, as a “wonderful, perfect New Year’s gift for the country”.

After being launched by a rocket, a vehicle carrying a potentially nuclear payload detaches and glides back to earth at hypersonic speeds.

The fanfare surrounding the test — it led the TV news, and state media reported that Putin gave the launch order — underscores how central nuclear sabre-rattling has become to the Kremlin’s effort to depict Russia as a global superpower for audiences at home and abroad.

The new weapon, dubbed the Avangard, is of a type that the US Pentagon has been both working on and worrying about as an arms race emerges among the US, Russia and China for missiles that can manoeuver easily and travel far faster than the speed of sound. There was no immediate, independent confirmation of the test. Traditional intercontinental ballistic missiles travel in a predetermined arc and do not manoeuver, making them easier to shoot down with missile defence interceptors.

Russia has pointed to US missile defences to justify the development of hypersonic boost-glide missiles. Although the US missile defence system is not designed to take on Russia’s strategic missiles, Moscow has long been unnerved by the prospect of a system that could undermine its nuclear deterrent.

For Putin, displays of new weaponry represent a way to excite Russians who miss superpower status as well an attempt to bring the US to the negotiating table. Tass reported that Russia has started testing a nuclear-propelled, nuclear-capable underwater drone.—