Hypersonic deterrence: how to maintain strategic balance
It is unlikely that nuclear weapons, which the US created in the mid-twentieth century and used only once – to bomb Japanese cities
– will ever be activated in a global conflict. We can assume that the
leaders of the official Western nuclear powers (the UK, US, and France)
as well as the other states that actually possess such weapons (India,
Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan) will continue to base the conceptual
foundation of their military strategy on this incontestable truism: “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Russia’s current military and political leaders agree with this self-evident observation. In his Oct. 22 speech
in Sochi before the Valdai Club, an international discussion group,
President Vladimir Putin echoed these sentiments: “The development of
nuclear weapons has made it clear that there can be no winners in a
global conflict.”
Unlike nuclear weapons, which are “tools of extreme impact,” Long-Range Hypersonic High-Precision Weapons (or Advanced Hypersonic Weapons
– AHW in US terminology) are ready for use in any scenario, including
as part of counter-terror operations. AHW do not cause unnecessary
civilian casualties and do not inflict significant material damage to
civil transportation systems, power plants, or other infrastructure
beyond the small affected area.
Russia has been developing its own promising prototypes of AHW in the
numbers deemed necessary to bolster its own security, in response to
both America’s functional rollout of Prompt Global Strike, an ambitious
program to deploy a global, layered missile-defense system, as well as
the Pentagon’s modernization of its strategic and tactical nuclear
weapons.
