With Russia ahead of the US in the hypersonic weapons race, Trump accuses Moscow of stealing American tech

US President Donald Trump has accused Russia of stealing information about hypersonic weapon technology from the Barack Obama administration. Russia claims it began discussing the weapons almost 20 years ago.

“You know, they have a super-duper hypersonic missile… it is five times faster than a normal missile,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Minnesota. “Russia stole that information. You knew that, you knew that? Russia received this information and then built [the rocket].” 

However, Washington claims that it has a significantly faster missile, which, according to Trump, is envied by Moscow and Beijing.

“We have weapons that are so advanced that [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping], [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, everybody, we’re the envy of the world. But they don’t know quite what we have, but they know that we have stuff they have never even heard of before,” the President said.

Despite Trump's statements about US superiority, other parts of the government have recognized that the country is lagging behind Russia and China in producing hypersonic weapons. Last year, Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced that the Pentagon is “planning catchup” and “investing every dollar it can” to advance towards hypersonic weapons.

Last week, the Chinese web portal Sina dubbed Russia's Avangard hypersonic missile system a “more intimidating weapon than a nuclear bomb.” Unveiled in 2018, Putin claimed it is “absolutely invulnerable to any air or missile defense system."

According to Putin, Russia was forced to create hypersonic weapons after the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002.

“We had to create these [hypersonic] weapons in response to the deployment of the US strategic missile defense system, which in the future would be able to neutralize and reset all of our nuclear potential,” Putin claimed in a meeting with military design engineer Herbert Efremov. 

The Russian leader also claimed that Moscow made every possible effort to reach an agreement with the Americans, but it was all in vain.

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