‘I call it the super-duper missile’: Trump teases development of new hypersonic weapon

“We’re building, right now, incredible military equipment at a level that nobody has ever seen before. We have no choice. We have to do it with the adversaries we have out there. We have a, I call it the ‘super-duper missile.’ And I heard the other night, 17 times faster than what they have right now,” Trump said.

“You take the fastest missile we have right now, you’ve heard Russia has five times, and China is working on five or six times. We have one 17 times. And it’s just gotten the go-ahead. Seventeen times faster, if you can believe that, general. That’s something, right? Seventeen times faster than what we have right now. Fastest in the world by a factor of almost three,” Trump said.

In December 2019, Russia deployed its first iteration of hypersonic missiles called the Avangard system. The country conducted a test of the weapon in late 2018, with Russian President Vladimir Putin describing it afterward as “invulnerable to intercept by any existing and prospective missile defense means of the potential adversary.”

Earlier in 2018, Putin previewed those weapons during his state-of-the-nation address, likening the missile to a “meteorite” or “fireball.”

Jonathan Rath Hoffman, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, initially had no comment on the president’s remarks, but later confirmed the development of “a range of hypersonic missiles to counter our adversaries.”