Putin Reaffirms Plans for Hypersonic Maneuverable Warheads

  • 0 Respostas
  • 4922 Visualizações
*

Pantera

  • Perito
  • **
  • 399
  • +2/-0
Putin Reaffirms Plans for Hypersonic Maneuverable Warheads
« em: Outubro 03, 2005, 02:35:38 pm »
In a question-and-answer session with members of the Russian public broadcast live by Russian RTR television, President Putin spoke of Russia’s plans to rearm its military forces with advanced new weapons, including strategic missiles capable of penetrating foreign defenses. Putin discussed in particular hypersonic strategic systems capable of maneuvering both in course and altitude which are capable of evading ballistic missile defenses such as those being developed by “partner countries”—a probable reference to the midcourse defenses gradually being fielded by the United States. Putin has spoken of these maneuverable systems on several occasions. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov referred to them as well in a recent television interview.

        Excerpt of Putin response from Russian television and print media:

There is a lot going on from the point of view of re-equipping our army. This goes for state-of-the-art tanks. For the first time, large batches of new tanks for the army will be procured. We are moving towards the trials of upgraded new missiles that will be employed both on sea and on land. We are beginning to procure new ballistic missiles, including mobile systems.

We are continuing to develop precision-guided weapons in the testing of which I recently took part, as you probably have seen. It was a long-range, precision-guided weapon [possible reference to SS-N-23 launch on August 16, or to the test of a new cruise missile]. We shall be developing—indeed we are developing and will be bringing into service—new precision-guided strategic systems. I have already spoken about it. They are the kind that no-one in the world has obtained or is likely to obtain before we do. They are systems that will operate at hypersonic speeds and will be able to change direction in terms of heading and altitude. They are virtually unassailable systems, unassailable for anything including the missile defenses that are being developed in some of our partner countries.
        Whereas only a few years ago Russia bought very little for the army, Putin said, “A great deal has been done in the past few years to restore the defense industry’s financial health. Xinhua cited Putin as saying that some 5 billion US dollars worth of Russian arms were exported in 2004. Putin said that expansion to foreign markets was a way to support Russia’s defense sector financially. “If our specialists make it to foreign markets and uphold our interests there, it will be a very good job,” the president said.

        In a curious follow-up story published by RIA Novosti, however, an anonymous “air defense expert” is cited as saying that Putin, “must have meant state-of-the-art air defense systems when he said that Russia would deploy new hypersonic missile systems, virtually invulnerable to enemy defenses.” The air defense expert quoted by RIA Novosti added that specialists and researchers had been working on these weapons for a long time, and that the new system would (allegedly) combine the functions of air defense, missile defense and space defense.

        To suggest that these systems referenced are air defenses would seem to make little sense, however—air defenses (for example Russia’s S-300 and S-400 systems) have no need to penetrate American missile defenses

http://www.missilethreat.com/