Not to be outdone by the Americans, Russia’s next generation bomber, the PAK-DA, will be loaded with the latest in hypersonic weaponry, the Defense Ministry told Ria Novosti newswire on Friday.
The PAK-DA is Russia’s answer to the newest stealth bombers being built in the United States by Boeing and Lockheed Martin . Equipping them with hypersonic weaponry just puts Russia on par with air defense technologies already being tested in the U.S.
Russian owned United Aircraft Corporation is building the PAK-DA, which stands for Perspective Aviation Complex for Long Range Aviation.
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Typical cruise missiles travel at around 500 to 600 mph, but a hypersonic missile can travel as fast as Mach 5 (around 4,000 miles per hour) and will give the enemy very little time to vacate the premises.
For instance, The Economist magazine points out that in 1998 the U.S. fired 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles from ships in the Arabian Sea. The target was a training camp in Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden was working with the Taliban. It took over two hours for the missiles to hit their target from their launch base. By then, Osama was long gone.
Full article: Like U.S., Latest Russian Bombers Testing Hypersonic Weapons (Forbes)
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