AP, MOSCOWRussia has a strong edge in designing new weapons and has become the only country to deploy hypersonic weapons, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday. “Not a single country has hypersonic weapons, let alone hypersonic weapons of intercontinental range.”The US military has been working on the development of hypersonic weapons in the past several years, and US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper in August said that he believes “it’s probably a matter of a couple of years” before the US has one. The Pentagon has also repeatedly warned the US Congress about hypersonic missiles being developed by Russia and China that would be harder to track and defeat. US officials have talked about putting a layer of sensors in space to more quickly detect enemy missiles, particularly the more advanced hypersonic threats. Russia must have the best weapons in the world, Putin said on Tuesday, citing a buildup of NATO forces near Russia’s western borders.

Source: Taipei Times December 25, 2019 15:56 UTC