Russia Just Placed the Nuclear-Capable Avangard Hypersonic Missile in Combat Duty

Dec. 28, 2019 (EIRNS)—The Russian Defense Ministry issued an official statement on Dec. 27, which reported that

“Russian Defense Minister Army General Sergei Shoigu reported to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin that the first missile regiment armed with the latest Avangard strategic missile system with the hypersonic boost-glide vehicle assumed combat duty from 10:00 a.m. Moscow time on Dec. 27, 2019.”

The Defense Minister characterized this as a “landmark event.” TASS added that it had earlier been reported that the first regiment of Avangards would be deployed in the Orenburg Region in the Urals.

President Putin had first announced the existence of the Avangard, along with other advanced weapons systems, in his annual state-of-the-nation address to the Federal Assembly—Russia’s bicameral legislature—on March 1, 2018. Given both Avangard’s top speed of well over Mach 20, and its extreme maneuverability, Putin stated after successful December 2018 tests: “The Avangard is invulnerable to intercept by any existing and prospective missile defense means of the potential adversary.” In a Dec. 24, 2019 speech to the Defense Ministry Board, Putin had stated that “Not a single country possesses hypersonic weapons, let alone continental-range hypersonic weapons.”

Yesterday’s announcement got the attention of the major international media. Reuters reported that “the Pentagon said in a statement that it ‘will not characterize the Russian claims’ about the Avangard’s capabilities.” Both Reuters and BBC reported that a month ago, on Nov. 26, U.S. experts had examined an Avangard under inspection rules of the 2010 New START treaty. The START treaty is set to expire in February 2021, and Russia has offered to consider including Avangard in it if the treaty is renewed, as Russia proposes.

BBC was unable to disguise London’s sense of terror:

“It is hard to determine if Russia’s new Avangard hypersonic missile system really has entered service, as Moscow claims, or if this is just an advanced phase of field testing. But President Putin’s eagerness to claim bragging rights is to some extent justified. Russia looks to be ahead in the hypersonic stakes.... It is not so much the speed of the hypersonic weapon alone that counts. It is its extraordinary maneuverability as it glides towards its target. This poses a huge problem for existing anti-missile defense systems.... Thus, if Russia’s claims are true, it has developed a long-range intercontinental missile system that may well be impossible to defend against.”

BBC concluded, erroneously: “The announcement that Avangard is operational heralds a new and dangerous era in the nuclear arms race. It confirms once again President Putin’s focus on bolstering and modernizing Russia’s nuclear arsenal. It’s indicative of the return of great power competition.”

In fact, the development and deployment of the Avangard is a war-avoidance policy, as RT pointed out in a Dec. 27 article by senior writer Nebojsa Malic. Under the headline “Avangard Changes Everything: What Russia’s Hypersonic Warhead Deployment Means for the Global Arms Race,” Malic stated that

“Moscow’s deployment of Avangard hypersonic warheads means the U.S. missile defense installations in Europe are now obsolete—and that Washington would have to spend a lot of money it doesn’t have in order to catch up.... Avangard is capable of reaching Mach 27 without losing control or disintegrating under heat and pressure. This means that the weapon can outmaneuver any defenses on its approach phase, rendering it ‘absolutely invulnerable to any air or missile defense system,’ in the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

Malic concluded that “Moscow now has at least a 10- to 15-year window of guaranteed nuclear deterrence, political scientists Sergey Karaganov and Dmitry Suslov argued recently in the journal Russia in Global Affairs. In other words, global thermonuclear war just got much less likely, for a while at least.”