Russia's New 'Ultimate' Weapon: Capable of hitting a target almost anywhere in the world and penetrating any existing anti-missile shield, such as the system deployed by the United States in Europe.

Avangard: "Revelations" about the Russian ICBM with a hypersonic glide vehicle - Putin's ultimate weapon in a silo (vid)

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The Russian military forces presented, at a special juncture, the famous strategic intercontinental ballistic missile system equipped with an Avangard type hypersonic glide vehicle, with the country's Ministry of Defense publishing footage of the Russian weapon being put into operation.

In particular, Russia's missile forces deployed, in a launch silo in southern Russia, an intercontinental ballistic missile equipped with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle that can carry a nuclear warhead, according to today's broadcast of the Russian Defense Ministry TV channel.

As it approaches its target, the Avangard glide vehicle detaches from the missile and can make sharp maneuvers out of the missile's path and at supersonic speeds of up to 27 times the speed of sound (about 34,000 kilometers per hour).

The system is part of a new generation of missiles capable, according to Moscow, of hitting a target almost anywhere in the world and penetrating any existing anti-missile shield, such as the system deployed by the United States in Europe.

The "pride" of the Russian President

President Vladimir Putin announced the creation of the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle in 2018, saying it was in response to the US's development of a new generation of weapons and a US missile defense system that the Avangard can penetrate.

Vladimir Putin had compared the Avangard missiles, which were successfully tested in December 2018 with a range of 4,000 km, "to the creation of the first artificial Earth satellite", a reference to Sputnik which was launched in 1957 and symbolized the Soviet Union's technological breakthrough against the United States in the midst of the Cold War.

“It is an intercontinental ballistic missile system. It is the ultimate weapon," the Russian president said with obvious satisfaction in June 2018.

"I don't think only one country will have such a weapon in the years to come. We already have it," he added, as relations with the West are at their lowest point.

The Time for Nuclear Weapons

The Russian Defense Ministry TV channel broadcast images of a ballistic missile being carried into a launch silo, slowly rising to a vertical position and then descending into the silo in the Orenburg region, near Kazakhstan. Russia had deployed its first Avangard-equipped missile in 2019 at the same facility in the same region.

Russia and the United States, by far the largest nuclear powers, have both lamented the collapse of arms control treaties that had slowed the Cold War arms race and reduced the risk of a nuclear war. However, the United States, Russia and China are developing a range of new weapons systems, including hypersonic ones.