The Russian defence ministry deployed its ferocious ‘Avangard’ hypersonic missile into combat duty at the Yasnenskoye missile formation in the Orenburg region in southern Urals on Saturday. According to Russian news agency TASS, it is one of six “next generation” weapons announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2018.
Russian hypersonic glide vehicle
The TASS report said the Avangard warhead can travel at a hypersonic speed of about 32,000 kmph while manoeuvring and overwhelming any missile defence.
According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), an American think tank, the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) was developed when the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republic) began its research on hypersonic warheads in the mid-1980s.
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But due to the disintegration of the USSR in 1991, the initial effort was abandoned and Russia’s defence manufacturer NPO Mashinostroeniya reportedly reinstated the project in the mid-1990s under the designation “Project 4202”, the report further said.
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The CSIS report further claimed that this is a nuclear-capable missile with a range of over 6,000 km, a weight of about 2,000 kg, and the ability to carry a nuclear or conventional payload. The nuclear warhead on the missile is “more than 2 megatons in TNT (trinitrotoluene) equivalent,” the TASS report claimed.
Avangard’s manoeuvrability, according to CSIS, could make its trajectory unpredictable, complicating intercept attempts after its boost phase. There have been approximately 14 flight tests of the Avangard between 1990 and 2018, CSIS report said.
