WASHINGTON. Russia has fired dozens of guided missiles into Ukraine, but on Saturday it said for the first time that it had fired a hypersonic-capable missile in an attack on an ammunition depot in western Ukraine. The report cannot be independently verified, but if true, this could be the first use of a hypersonic weapon in combat.
Hypersonic weapons, commonly defined as weapons capable of flying at over Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, are at the center of an arms race between the United States, Russia and China.
According to a report released Thursday by the Congressional Research Service, the United States has been developing this type of weapon since the early 2000s, focusing on two distinct variants.
The first is a “hypersonic glide vehicle” that is launched from a missile and then separated before gliding towards the target, and the second is a faster version of a cruise missile that can be launched from submarines, ships, aircraft and land vehicles. says in the report. The Pentagon has requested $3.8 billion for hypersonic research in fiscal year 2022.
The report notes that the Department of Defense is showing a growing interest in developing these weapons in part because of advances by Russia and China. According to the report, these countries “have a number of hypersonic weapons programs and have likely deployed hypersonic glide vehicles potentially armed with nuclear warheads.”
Representative of the Russian Defense Ministry, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said that the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles destroyed an underground warehouse of Ukrainian missiles and aviation ammunition in the west of the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine.
Yuriy Ignat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military, confirmed on Saturday that Russian troops had struck an underground warehouse in western Ukraine, but said the type of missile was “not yet determined.”
The Pentagon did not immediately respond Saturday morning to a request for comment on Russia’s announcement.
In recent briefings at the Pentagon, Defense Department officials declined to comment on reports that Russian forces have used weapons such as cluster munitions, which explode in mid-air to drop smaller bombs, and thermobaric explosives, which create more powerful and sustained blast waves. . than traditional high explosives.
But they have offered a current count of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and surface-to-air missiles fired by Russian forces. On Wednesday, a senior Defense Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity discussed the details of the war in Ukraine, said Russian troops had fired more than 1,080 missiles since the war began on Feb. 24.
Ivan Nechepurenko and Valerie Hopkins provided reporting.