cruise vs hypersonic missile

What's the big deal about hypersonic weapons and why are major powers vying for this capability?

The US has confirmed that China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle from a near-orbital trajectory in August, after the Chinese government denied that it was a weapon and said it was merely a space vehicle. 

The test comes amid an intensifying global race for the next generation of long-range weapons that are harder to detect and intercept.

In recent months, the United States and Russia have both conducted tests of hypersonic weapons, with North Korea saying it too had tested a newly developed hypersonic missile.

How the missile works

Hypersonic missiles travel at more than five times the speed of sound in the upper atmosphere — or about 6,200km per hour.

This is slower than an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) but the shape of a hypersonic glide vehicle allows it to manoeuvre toward a target or away from defences.

Hypersonic missiles can also travel for longer without being detected by radar.

Combining a glide vehicle with a missile that can launch it partially into orbit — a so-called fractional orbital bombardment system (FOBS) — could thus strip adversaries of reaction time and traditional defence mechanisms.

ICBMs, by contrast, are long-range missiles that carry nuclear warheads on ballistic trajectories that leave the earth's atmosphere before re-entry, pursuing a parabolic trajectory towards its target – but they never reach space.

Both the US and USSR studied FOBS during the Cold War, and the USSR deployed such a system starting in the 1970s. 

It was removed from service by the mid-80s.

Submarine-launched ballistic missiles had many of the advantages of FOBS — reducing detection times and making it impossible to know where a strike would come from — and were seen as less destabilising than FOBS.

Who leads the race?

The Financial Times first reported that China had launched a rocket carrying a hypersonic glide vehicle that flew through space, circling the globe before cruising down toward its target, which it missed by about two dozen miles.

In July, Russia successfully tested a Tsirkon (Zircon) hypersonic cruise missile , which President Vladimir Putin touted as part of a new generation of missile systems. Moscow also tested the weapon from a submarine for the first time.

The United States said in late September that it had tested an air-breathing hypersonic weapon — meaning it sustains flight on its own through the atmosphere like a cruise missile — marking the first successful test of that class of weapon since 2013.

Days after the US announcement, North Korea fired a newly developed hypersonic missile, calling it a "strategic weapon" that boosted its defence capabilities, though some South Korean analysts described the test as a failure.

Why it matters

The recent tests are the moves in a dangerous arms race in which smaller Asian nations are striving to develop advanced long-range missiles, alongside major military powers.

Hypersonic weapons, and FOBS, could be a concern as they can potentially evade missile shields and early warning systems.

Some experts cautioned against hype surrounding missiles such as the one China tested in August.

"China already has ~100 nuclear-armed ICBMs that can strike the US," said Jeffrey Lewis, a missile specialist at the US-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, responding to the FT report on Twitter. 

"Although the glider is a nice touch … this is an old concept that is newly relevant as a way to defeat missile defences," Mr Lewis said.

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The Physics and Hype of Hypersonic Weapons

These novel missiles cannot live up to the grand promises made on their behalf, aerodynamics shows

By David Wright & Cameron Tracy

Brian Stauffer

I n a televised address to Russia’s Federal Assembly in 2018, President Vladimir Putin announced an escalation of the ongoing arms race with the U.S., which had withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002. Having rejected the decades-long arms-control agreement, the U.S. had developed and begun building a network of defenses to intercept long-range ballistic missiles, threatening Russia’s ability to deter attacks on its homeland. He had warned Americans that Russia would be forced to respond to these deployments, Putin told his audience, but they had refused to listen. “So listen now!”

Among other systems, Russia was developing new hypersonic weapons, Putin declared: missiles that fly long distances through the atmosphere at more than five times the speed of sound, or faster than Mach 5. (Mach 1 is the local speed of sound. Speeds between Mach 1 and Mach 5 are supersonic, whereas those exceeding Mach 5 are hypersonic.) According to him, one of these, called Avangard, was a highly maneuverable missile that could glide thousands of kilometers with an initial speed greater than Mach 20, making it “absolutely invulnerable to any air or missile defense system.”

Putin’s announcement, accompanied by intimidating simulations of the new weapons snaking across the globe at unbelievable speeds, added fuel to a dangerous new arms race. The weapons involved in this competition are touted not only for their speed but also for their stealth and maneuverability. Intercontinental ballistic missiles, which follow an elliptical path into space before plunging down toward their target, reach speeds above Mach 20, but they have predictable trajectories for most of their flight and typically can maneuver only briefly, after they reenter the atmosphere. In contrast, hypersonic weapons would fly deep within the atmosphere most of the time, using lift generated by airflow to weave around and try to evade interceptors. Approaching at such low altitudes, these weapons would avoid detection by ground-based radar systems until close to their target, making them more difficult to stop.

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In an assessment after Putin’s speech, U.S. military officials stated that hypersonic weapons, which China was also developing, would “ revolutionize warfare .” The Pentagon, which had been working on similar systems for a decade and a half, ramped up its own efforts; last year Congress dedicated $3.2 billion to the research and development of hypersonic weapons and defenses. Russia and China now claim to each have deployed at least one such system. The U.S. has six known hypersonic programs, divided among the air force, army and navy. Proponents say that these weapons are incredibly fast and agile and virtually invisible.

We disagree. We belong to a small but vibrant community of physicists and engineers scattered around the globe who study new weapons systems to understand their potential impacts on global security. This tradition is deep, going back to participants in the Manhattan Project and Russian scientists such as Andrei Sakharov, who sought to mitigate the danger to the world from the nuclear weapons they had helped create. As investigative physicists, we glean what information we can about new and usually secretive technologies, analyze it and share our evaluations with the public.

Our studies indicate that hypersonic weapons may have advantages in certain scenarios, but by no means do they constitute a revolution. Many of the claims about them are exaggerated or simply false. And yet the widespread perception that hypersonic weapons are a game-changer has increased tensions among the U.S., Russia and China, driving a new arms race and escalating the chances of conflict.

Fits and Starts

Militaries have pursued hypersonic aircraft for almost a century, though with limited success. In the late 1930s Austrian engineer Eugen Sänger and German physicist Irene Bredt designed the first hypersonic aircraft, a glider called the Silbervogel. It was to be launched from a rocket, fly primarily within the atmosphere and, like any other glider, stay aloft using aerodynamic lift, but Nazi planners decided it would be too difficult and expensive to build.

During World War II, German engineers developed rocket engines, which burn propellant, a mixture of fuel and chemical oxidizer, to release an intense burst of energy. In subsequent decades, experimental rocket-powered aircraft broke speed record after speed record. In October 1947 the rocket-propelled X-1 became the first piloted aircraft to officially break the sound barrier—crossing Mach 1—and in the 1960s the X-15 reached Mach 6.7 during tests. The strong g-forces produced by rocket engines placed extreme demands on human physiology, so piloted rocket-propelled aircraft never became more than experiments. But rocket technology enabled the U.S. and the Soviet Union to build arsenals of nuclear-armed ballistic missiles that are boosted to more than Mach 20 to reach across continents.

Credit: Ben Gilliland

Credit: Ben Gilliland; Source: “Supersonic Combustion in Air-Breathing Propulsion Systems for Hypersonic Flight,” by Javier Urzay, in Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics , Vol. 50; January 2018 ( boost-glide weapon flow physics reference )

Another technology developed in this era, the jet engine, became the workhorse of military and commercial travel, however. Drawing in atmospheric oxygen to continuously burn fuel, a jet engine does not carry the extra weight of an oxidizer. It enables long-distance transport and maneuverability without the extreme acceleration of rocket engines. Today the fastest official speed for a piloted jet aircraft stands at approximately Mach 3, which the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird reached in July 1976. Jet engines also power cruise missiles—maneuverable and pilotless aircraft, the fastest of which can achieve supersonic speeds.

Meanwhile hypersonic gliders continued to soar—and drop. In 1963, after spending over $5 billion (in current dollars) developing the X-20 Dyna-Soar hypersonic glider, the U.S. abandoned the design. But after the Al Qaeda attacks on September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush directed the development of hypersonic missiles that could quickly and accurately disrupt terrorist activities on different continents with nonnuclear warheads. (Ballistic missiles could do the job, but the launch of such a weapon could be mistaken for a nuclear attack, provoking a nuclear war.)

Bush also withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which the U.S. and the Soviet Union had signed in 1972. The treaty had stopped the adversaries from constructing defensive shields against each other’s ballistic missiles—and thereby halted a race for technologies to build shields and break through those of the other side. Instead the Bush administration proceeded to develop and deploy interceptors to protect against long-range ballistic missiles. Fearing that their ability to deter a U.S. nuclear attack would be compromised, Russia and, more recently, China, began to pursue diverse stratagems for surmounting the U.S. shield. The most recent of these devices are hypersonic missiles, which fly too low to be blocked by current U.S. interceptors of long-range ballistic missiles. In sum, the 9/11 attacks provoked a series of hasty decisions that have brought the three superpowers to the present situation, in which they are all racing to develop hypersonic weapons based on various technologies and designed for various purposes.

Drag and Lift

Hypersonic systems deployed in the near term will be “boost-glide” weapons, which would be launched by a rocket booster and then glide long distances without propulsion. (The U.S. and other countries are also working to build hypersonic cruise missiles, but their engines are still under development.) Yet our studies indicate that hypersonic gliders encounter severe challenges. Physics gets in the way.

Designers of hypersonic vehicles face a daunting adversary: drag, the resistance a fluid offers to anything moving through it. The drag on a flying object increases in proportion to the square of its velocity, making it particularly debilitating at hypersonic speeds. A glider at Mach 5 is subjected to 25 times the drag force than when it flies at Mach 1, for example, and one at Mach 20 faces 400 times the drag of when it is at Mach 1.

Even more severe is the energy drain from an aircraft as it pushes the molecules of air forward and aside: it increases as the cube of the velocity. So a glider flying at Mach 5 will lose energy 125 times faster than at Mach 1; one flying at Mach 20 will lose energy 8,000 times faster. Just as problematic, the kinetic energy flowing from the glider to the surrounding air transforms to thermal energy and shock waves. Some of that energy transfers back to the vehicle as heat: leading edges of boost-glide weapons flying at Mach 10 or above can reach temperatures above 2,000 kelvins for sustained periods. Protecting a vehicle from this intense heat is one of the biggest problems facing engineers.

At the same time, like any other glider, a hypersonic one must generate lift—a force perpendicular to its direction of motion—to stay aloft and to turn. (A glider turns by banking or otherwise inducing a horizontal component of the lift force.) As it happens, lift is also proportional to the square of the velocity. Moreover, the aerodynamic processes that produce lift also unavoidably generate drag. The ratio of the lift force, L, to the drag force, D, is called the lift-to-drag ratio, L/D, a key marker of a glider’s performance.

Achievable values of L/D for hypersonic vehicles are much lower than for conventional aircraft. For subsonic aircraft, the ratio can be 15 or larger. Yet after decades of research and development, U.S. hypersonic weapons tested in the past decade appear to have L/D values less than three. Such low L/D ratios mean low lift and high drag—which limits the speed and range of a hypersonic glider, reduces its maneuverability and increases surface heating.

As if that were not enough, the physics and chemistry of air flowing past an object become radically different at hypersonic speeds. Heated to thousands of degrees, the surrounding air dissociates, converting molecular oxygen into free atoms that can ionize and scour away the surface of the vehicle. Even if the missile survives the roasting, the heating produces a bright infrared signal that satellites can see.

No Silver Bullet

In the early 2010s the U.S. flight-tested a long-range glider, the Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2). It was designed to glide up to 7,600 kilometers after being boosted to an initial speed of Mach 20 by a rocket. We combined data from these tests with other information about the vehicle to construct detailed computer simulations of hypersonic flight. We also compared the performance of boost-glide weapons with long-established technologies, such as ballistic or cruise missiles, on the three abilities in which hypersonic weapons are said to be exceptional—delivery time, maneuverability and stealth.

Hypersonic weapons are often said to reduce the time needed to deliver a warhead, but this claim is largely based on a misleading comparison with subsonic cruise missiles or with ballistic missiles on longer trajectories. The most energy-efficient path for a ballistic missile, called a minimum-energy trajectory, sends a warhead arcing high above Earth before it falls to its target. The warhead avoids atmospheric drag over most of its flight but follows a much longer path than a hypersonic glider would, so it can take somewhat longer to reach the same target.

Yet a ballistic missile can instead fly at lower altitude, called a depressed trajectory—long seen as a way of delivering quicker nuclear attacks from submarines. Such a path would be much shorter than a minimum-energy one, and a warhead following it would also avoid drag over most of its trajectory. In contrast, a hypersonic glider spends significantly more time within the atmosphere, where drag reduces its speed. Our calculations show that a ballistic missile on a depressed trajectory can deliver a warhead with an equal or shorter flight time than a hypersonic weapon over the same range.

Maneuvering is another advertised advantage of hypersonic weapons. Again, the reality is more complicated. The U.S. has developed and tested maneuvering reentry vehicles (MaRVs)—warheads that use aerodynamic forces to change direction as they near the target, helping to increase accuracy and evade missile defenses—for ballistic missiles for decades: maneuverability is not unique to hypersonic weapons. To be sure, MaRVs typically twist and turn only late in flight. They cannot snake around during their entire course as hypersonic gliders are supposed to do. But the maneuverability of hypersonic gliders is constrained by the great forces needed to turn a vehicle flying at such tremendous speeds.

HTV-2 GLIDER ( top ), shaped like an arrowhead and shown prior to its launch from a rocket, was tested by the U.S. military in the early 2010s but failed to perform as advertised. A rocket booster ( bottom ) launches a different hypersonic glider the Pentagon is developing, based on a 1970s conical design. Credit: Volgi Archive and Alamy Stock ( top ); Oscar Sosa and U.S. Navy ( bottom )

To change direction, a hypersonic glider must use lift forces to impart a horizontal velocity—which might itself have to be hypersonic. For example, to turn by 30 degrees, a glider flying at Mach 15, or 4.5 kilometers per second, must generate a horizontal velocity of Mach 7.5, or 2.3 kilometers per second. (Because the speed of sound changes with density and altitude, flight engineers often take Mach 1 to be about 300 meters per second, and so do we.) At the same time, the glider must retain enough vertical lift to stay aloft. Such maneuvers can cost significant speed and range.

To generate the extra lift needed to change direction, the vehicle could dive to a lower altitude to use the greater push from denser air. It would make its turn before returning to a higher altitude, with less drag, to resume its flight. Going to lower altitudes would reduce the time needed to turn but also increase the drag that the vehicle experiences. For example, at Mach 15 a glider such as the HTV-2 would fly at an altitude of about 40 kilometers. If it drops by about 2.5 kilometers, then turning by 30 degrees would take about seven minutes, during which it would travel along a vast arc, with a radius of some 4,000 kilometers. The extra drag that comes from traveling in denser air, even for such a short time, would reduce the glider’s speed by about Mach 1.3, causing it to lose about 450 kilometers of range out of the 3,000 kilometers it might otherwise have traveled.

Some amount of midcourse maneuvering, such as for selecting a new target, can be useful, and gliders could likely make larger maneuvers than ballistic missile warheads can. Still, MaRVs can already maneuver by hundreds of kilometers during reentry, so it is hard to see how this ability is revolutionary.

Another common claim is that because gliders travel at lower altitudes than a ballistic warhead, they would be “ nearly invisible ” to early-warning systems. A ground-based radar system can spot a warhead at an altitude of 1,000 kilometers from about 3,500 kilometers away, but because of the earth’s curvature it would not see a glider approaching at a height of 40 kilometers until it was only about 500 kilometers away. But both the U.S. and Russia have early-warning satellites with sensitive infrared sensors that could spot the intense light that gliders emit because of their extreme temperatures. Our analysis indicates that currently deployed U.S. satellites would be capable of detecting and tracking gliders traveling through the atmosphere at speeds covering most of the hypersonic regime.

Gliders deployable in the foreseeable future might avoid being seen by U.S. satellites if they fly at the low end of the hypersonic range— below about Mach 6. This concern appears to be motivating U.S. research into new constellations of satellite sensors. But a boost-glide vehicle similar to the HTV-2 with an initial speed of Mach 5.5 would travel less than 500 kilometers, so flying at these speeds would significantly limit its range. Hypersonic cruise missiles could conceivably maintain these low speeds over longer distances. Such slow speeds may, however, negate another key argument for hypersonic weapons—their ability to avoid terminal missile defenses.

Russia and China seem to be developing hypersonic weapons largely because of their ability to evade U.S. missile defense systems. The U.S. Ground-based Midcourse Defense and ship-based Aegis SM-3 systems, which are intended to defend the U.S., Japan, and other countries, intercept above the atmosphere and are unable to engage hypersonic weapons flying in at lower altitudes. Hypersonic gliders with sufficient speed and maneuverability could also evade defenses of shorter range that work within the atmosphere, such as the U.S. Patriot, SM-2 and THAAD systems. These interceptors protect small regions, tens of kilometers across, around military sites and ships, using lift forces for turning to intercept incoming weapons. Their efficacy depends on their being more maneuverable than the missile they are trying to hit, which in turn depends strongly on flight speed. Patriot interceptors, for example, use rocket boosters to reach speeds of up to Mach 6. A hypersonic weapon could likely outmaneuver these interceptors if it maintained high speeds—but could become vulnerable to them when flying below about Mach 6. Thus, almost as soon as a hypersonic glider becomes invisible to satellites (but possibly visible to ground radar), it can become susceptible to interception.

Moreover, the ability to penetrate defensive shields is not unique to hypersonic gliders. Interceptors that operate outside the atmosphere are particularly vulnerable to being fooled by decoys and other countermeasures, which Russia and China have developed and likely deployed. Ballistic missiles of short and medium range, launched from an aircraft, could fly at altitudes low enough to avoid such “exo-atmospheric” defenses. Similarly, equipping ballistic missiles, including missiles of short and medium range, with MaRVs could allow them to outmaneuver and penetrate defenses that operate within the atmosphere.

Today the U.S. has shifted its focus from developing long-range gliders such as the HTV-2 toward hypersonic systems of shorter range, of up to a few thousand kilometers. This change is motivated not only by the shortcomings of the prototype HTV-2 glider, which the tests had revealed, but also by a new mission: to use weapons in a local, or “theater,” conflict to penetrate and destroy defensive systems. In terms of capabilities, however, these shorter-range hypersonic gliders are virtually indistinguishable from MaRV-tipped ballistic missiles flying on depressed trajectories. The similarity became obvious in 2018, when the U.S. Department of Defense announced its choice of design for a hypersonic vehicle intended for joint use by the army, navy and air force. Rather than opting for a wedge shape like that of the HTV-2, which would increase the value of L/D, the Pentagon chose an older conical design based on an experimental MaRV originally developed in the 1970s. This weapon would have a lower range and less maneuverability, the Pentagon acknowledged, but the technology was less risky.

A design from the 1970s is hardly revolutionary. It looks to us like the Pentagon is using the hype about hypersonic weapons to secure funding from Congress while reverting to a technology developed half a century ago for its main system. While the Pentagon is putting some funds into other designs, its focus is not the revolutionary systems that were advertised.

Significantly enhancing L/D, if possible, would reduce the technical barriers to long-range hypersonic flight. Theoretically, “waverider” designs can increase the L/D values of hypersonic vehicles to six or higher. These use a wedge shape that matches the shock-wave pattern of the airflow around the glider at a given speed and altitude, enclosing part of the shock wave under the vehicle to provide additional lift.

This concept dates from the late 1950s but has proved difficult to transform into working vehicles. The HTV-2 was in fact based on such a design—but achieved an L/D value of only 2.6. Even so, in 2020 the air force withdrew from the Pentagon’s joint hypersonic program and announced that it would pursue a wedge design like that of the HTV-2 for a short-range glider. Increasing L/D to four or six would help reduce heat loads and increase a glider’s range. But would such improvements open new possibilities for military uses?

We think not. Heating remains a major challenge because the surface temperature of a vehicle falls rather slowly with increases in L/D. Our calculations show, for example, that increasing L/D from 2.6, the value that the HTV-2 achieved, to 6 would reduce a glider’s surface temperature at a given speed by at most 15 percent. Preventing material damage during long-range flights would therefore still be difficult. Such an increase in L/D would also reduce the infrared signature of a missile and potentially increase the speed at which it could fly undetected (by current satellites) to up to Mach 7. Increasing L/D could in addition provide somewhat higher maneuverability—but that could be more easily boosted by relatively small increases in a glider’s initial speed. (Recall that maneuverability depends on lift, which increases as the square of the velocity.) For such reasons, it does not look like foreseeable advances in hypersonic gliders, such as increasing L/D, would give hypersonic weapons revolutionary capabilities.

Despite this reality, the hype around hypersonic weapons has driven big increases in spending on these systems and heightened fear, distrust and the risk of conflict among the U.S., Russia and China. The prospect of fast and potentially undetected attacks, even if exaggerated, could prompt these countries to react quickly and rashly to warnings, either real or mistaken, increasing the chances of blundering into conflict.

By providing technical analyses of new military systems, independent scientists and engineers such as ourselves seek to help the public and policy makers make sound decisions about them. Our ranks are thinning, however. Although funds for designing and building novel weapons seem inexhaustible, resources for such impartial research into their abilities and impacts is shrinking—creating daunting barriers for early-career researchers who might otherwise be inclined to join the field. We believe that the unbiased and informed studies we provide are vital, however, and policy makers should heed them. The U.S. Congress and the Pentagon need to dispense with the hype and make a careful, realistic and technically informed appraisal of the potential benefits and costs of hypersonic weapons. Failure to fully assess these factors is a recipe for wasteful spending and increased global risk.

David Wright is a research affiliate at the Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He formerly co-directed the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Cameron Tracy is a Global Security Fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists. An engineer and materials scientist, he researches hypersonic weapons and nuclear waste management.

China’s hypersonic missiles threaten US power in the Pacific – an aerospace engineer explains how the weapons work and the unique threats they pose

Director, Center for National Security Initiatives; Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

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Iain Boyd receives funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Department of Energy, NASA, and Lockheed-Martin.

University of Colorado provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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China’s newest hypersonic missile, the DF-27 , can fly as far as Hawaii, penetrate U.S. missile defenses and pose a particular threat to U.S. aircraft carriers , according to news reports of an assessment from the Pentagon .

Chinese researchers claimed in a May 2023 research journal report that the country’s hypersonic missiles could destroy a U.S. carrier group “with certainty .” This capability threatens to sideline U.S. aircraft carrier groups in the Pacific, potentially shifting the strategic balance of power and leaving the U.S. with limited options for assisting Taiwan in the event China invades.

This shift in the balance of power highlights how the next-generation hypersonic missiles that China, Russia and the U.S. are developing pose a significant threat to global security. I am an aerospace engineer who studies space and defense systems, including hypersonic systems. These new systems pose an important challenge due to their maneuverability all along their trajectory. Because their flight paths can change as they travel, defending against these missiles requires tracking them throughout their flight.

A second important challenge stems from the fact that they operate in a different region of the atmosphere from other existing threats. The new hypersonic weapons fly much higher than slower subsonic missiles but much lower than intercontinental ballistic missiles. The U.S. and its allies do not have good tracking coverage for this in-between region, nor do Russia or China.

Destabilizing effect

Russia has claimed that some of its hypersonic weapons can carry a nuclear warhead. This statement alone is a cause for concern whether or not it is true. If Russia ever operates this system against an enemy, that country would have to decide the probability of the weapon being conventional or nuclear.

In the case of the U.S., if the determination were made that the weapon was nuclear, then there is a very high likelihood that the U.S. would consider this a first strike attack and respond by unloading its nuclear weapons on Russia . The hypersonic speed of these weapons increases the precariousness of the situation because the time for any last-minute diplomatic resolution would be severely reduced.

It is the destabilizing influence that modern hypersonic missiles represent that is perhaps the greatest risk they pose. I believe the U.S. and its allies should rapidly field their own hypersonic weapons to bring other nations such as Russia and China to the negotiating table to develop a diplomatic approach to managing these weapons.

What is hypersonic?

Describing a vehicle as hypersonic means that it flies much faster than the speed of sound, which is 761 miles per hour (1,225 kilometers per hour) at sea level and 663 mph (1,067 kph) at 35,000 feet (10,668 meters) where passenger jets fly. Passenger jets travel at just under 600 mph (966 kph), whereas hypersonic systems operate at speeds of 3,500 mph (5,633 kph) – about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) per second – and higher.

Hypersonic systems have been in use for decades. When John Glenn came back to Earth in 1962 from the first U.S. crewed flight around the Earth , his capsule entered the atmosphere at hypersonic speed. All of the intercontinental ballistic missiles in the world’s nuclear arsenals are hypersonic, reaching about 15,000 mph (24,140 kph), or about 4 miles (6.4 km) per second at their maximum velocity.

Intercontinental ballistic missiles are launched on large rockets and then fly on a predictable trajectory that takes them out of the atmosphere into space and then back into the atmosphere again. The new generation of hypersonic missiles fly very fast, but not as fast as ICBMs. They are launched on smaller rockets that keep them within the upper reaches of the atmosphere.

Three types of hypersonic missiles

There are three different types of non-ICBM hypersonic weapons: aero-ballistic, glide vehicles and cruise missiles. A hypersonic aero-ballistic system is dropped from an aircraft, accelerated to hypersonic speed using a rocket and then follows a ballistic, meaning unpowered, trajectory. The system Russian forces have been using to attack Ukraine, the Kinzhal , is an aero-ballistic missile. The technology has been around since about 1980.

A hypersonic glide vehicle is boosted on a rocket to high altitude and then glides to its target, maneuvering along the way. Examples of hypersonic glide vehicles include China’s Dongfeng-17 , Russia’s Avangard and the U.S. Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike system. U.S. officials have expressed concern that China’s hypersonic glide vehicle technology is further advanced than the U.S. system.

A hypersonic cruise missile is boosted by a rocket to hypersonic speed and then uses an air-breathing engine called a scramjet to sustain that speed. Because they ingest air into their engines, hypersonic cruise missiles require smaller launch rockets than hypersonic glide vehicles, which means they can cost less and be launched from more places. Hypersonic cruise missiles are under development by China and the U.S. The U.S. reportedly conducted a test flight of a scramjet hypersonic missile in March 2020.

Defensive measures

The primary reason nations are developing these next-generation hypersonic weapons is how difficult they are to defend against due to their speed, maneuverability and flight path. The U.S. is starting to develop a layered approach to defending against hypersonic weapons that includes a constellation of sensors in space and close cooperation with key allies

With all of this activity on hypersonic weapons and defending against them, it is important to assess the threat they pose to national security. Hypersonic missiles with conventional, non-nuclear warheads are primarily useful against high-value targets, such as an aircraft carrier. Being able to take out such a target could have a significant impact on the outcome of a major conflict.

However, hypersonic missiles are expensive and therefore not likely to be produced in large quantities. As seen in the recent use by Russia, hypersonic weapons are not necessarily a silver bullet that ends a conflict.

This is an updated version of an article that was originally published on April 15, 2022.

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Complex Air Defense: Countering the Hypersonic Missile Threat

Photo: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Keith Henry Archives

Table of Contents

Report by Tom Karako and Masao Dahlgren

Published February 7, 2022

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Hypersonic weapons combine the speed of ballistic missiles with the maneuverability and detectability challenges of cruise missiles, leaving little time to react. In the past five years, Russia, China, and others have accelerated their development of hypersonic missiles to threaten U.S. forces in the homeland and abroad. The current Ballistic Missile Defense System, largely equipped to contend with legacy ballistic missile threats, must be adapted to this challenge. The same characteristics that make hypersonic missiles attractive may also hold the key to defeating them. A hypersonic defense architecture should exploit hypersonic weapons’ unique vulnerabilities and employ new capabilities, including a space sensor layer, glide phase interceptor, and alternative kill mechanisms. These changes are not only necessary to mitigate the hypersonic threat but to defeat an emerging generation of maneuvering missiles and aerial threats.

This report is made possible by support from Raytheon Technologies and Lockheed Martin, and by general support to CSIS.

Masao Dahlgren

Programs & projects.

The World’s First Hypersonic Cruise Missile Will Fly 20 Times Faster Than the Competition

Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) will be the first scramjet-powered weapon to enter production.

• Unlike most cruise missiles, however, this one travels way faster than the speed of sound , with the capability to fly at speeds in excess of Mach 5.
• Exactly how fast the new Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile will be remains a mystery.

The Pentagon has plenty of cruise missiles in its arsenal, from the long-serving Tomahawk to the new JASSM-ER . But a new missile set to enter service in 2027 is radically different: the new Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) will fly up to 20 times faster, giving adversaries little time to escape its wrath. HACM will be the first mass-produced weapon to use air-breathing scramjet engines.

Raytheon and Northrop Grumman won a contract worth $985 million to develop the world’s first hypersonic cruise missile. HACM, developed for the United States and Australia, is an air-launched hypersonic cruise missile designed to quickly strike targets on the ground. Under the terms of the contract, the Pentagon should see the first operational missiles in 2027.

In 2020, the U.S. and Australia jointly began the Southern Cross Integrated Flight Research Experiment partnership, or SCIFiRE. Named after the constellation that appears on Australia’s national flag, SCIFiRE was meant to develop an air-breathing hypersonic weapon system designed to be carried on both U.S. and Australian aircraft, including the F/A-18 Super Hornet , F-35A Joint Strike Fighter , P-8A Poseidon aircraft, and others. The contract will mature the Raytheon SCIFiRE prototype into an actual weapon system.

HACM is a tactical weapon designed to be used on day one of a large-scale conventional conflict . “HACM will provide our commanders with tactical flexibility to employ fighters to hold high-value, time-sensitive targets at risk while maintaining bombers for other strategic targets,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown said in an Air Force statement last week.

Traditional cruise missiles are basically pilotless aircraft. Like many aircraft, turbofan engines power cruise missiles, propelling them at subsonic speeds. Cruise missiles fly low to avoid radar detection, and a slower speed helps them fly lower and hug the ground. Tomahawk cruise missiles , for example, fly at an altitude of between 98 and 164 feet at a speed of 550 miles per hour.

HACM is a hypersonic weapon, which means it flies at Mach 5 or faster—but we don’t know exactly how much faster it will fly. Most missiles that remain in the atmosphere, like air-to-air missiles , top out at around Mach 3+. SCIFiRE was descended from the earlier HIFiRE program , which tested a scramjet engine at speeds up to Mach 8.

HACM will be the world’s first operational weapon system to use a scramjet engine . Like turbofan engines, scramjets scoop up oxygen from the surrounding atmosphere to use as fuel. One key difference between the two is that a turbofan engine scoops up oxygen at subsonic speeds, while a scramjet scoops it up at supersonic speeds. More oxygen means more fuel for the scramjet engine, which enables it to propel the missile even faster. According to NASA , scramjet engines should work to at least Mach 15. That translates to 11,509 miles per hour, or fast enough to circle Earth in about two hours.

Hypersonic weapons are the new hotness in warfare. Most of the avowed nuclear powers have technically had hypersonic weapons for a half-century or more, as the ballistic missiles that carry nuclear warheads travel at hypersonic speeds, impacting their targets at up to 15,000 miles per hour. This new generation of hypersonic weapons is different in that it is non-nuclear in nature—at least so far—and would be used immediately in a conventional war.

There’s a lot we don’t know about HACM. We don’t know how fast it really flies, or how far it flies. All we know is it is small enough to be carried by a fighter jet and will be ready by 2027. One thing is for sure: HACM is awkward and we need a better name for it.

Kyle Mizokami is a writer on defense and security issues and has been at Popular Mechanics since 2015. If it involves explosions or projectiles, he's generally in favor of it. Kyle’s articles have appeared at The Daily Beast, U.S. Naval Institute News, The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, Combat Aircraft Monthly, VICE News , and others. He lives in San Francisco.

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The Differences Between Unmanned Aircraft, Drones, Cruise Missiles and Hypersonic Vehicles

By lieutenant colonel, by lt col,  andreas,  schmidt.

Joint Air Power Competence Centre

 Andre

 haider.

• Additional Authors

Introduction

To define the impact of unmanned aerial systems on current and future NATO operations, it is very important to identify which kind or category of threats are included and which are not. This section will try to clarify this definition and will show that a clear classification is sometimes not easy to achieve.

A threat is typically defined as the combination of malevolent intent and the ability to put it into action. Further subcategories of this overarching term exist, such as ‘air threat’ to better describe the operational environment and to categorize or delineate measures, like ‘air defence’ to counter the respective threat. The set of all capabilities that qualify as air threats is so diverse and complex that no singular system can be used to execute air defence. Additionally, the question of what constitutes an air threat is not an easy one. Is an air threat any capability that uses the air as its main or final domain for effect delivery? If that were the case, a projectile from a rifle would be an air threat, which is not the case. However, the defence against larger projectiles like artillery shells or mortar rounds, which are a typical ground threat, finally became part of air defence considerations after Counter-Rocket-Artillery-Mortar (C-RAM) systems had been developed and fielded.

Defining Unmanned Aircraft

Since this document is about the threat of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), the term Unmanned Aircraft (UA) needs to be looked at. Currently, NATO defines UA as an aircraft that does not carry a human operator and which is operated remotely using various levels of automated functions. 1 UA can be expendable or recoverable and may carry lethal or non-lethal payloads. Of note, cruise missiles are categorically excluded from this NATO definition. As this definition is very broad, the term aircraft needs to be described for a better understanding. The ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) defines an aircraft as any machine that can derive support in the atmosphere from the reactions of the air other than the reactions of the air against the earth’s surface. 2

By this portrayal alone, all projectiles that only have initial propulsion and then just follow a ballistic trajectory (e.g. bullets, artillery shells, regular bombs or ballistic missiles) can be excluded from the aircraft category. For the purpose of this paper, also ordnance which uses aerodynamic lift or other interactions with the atmosphere just to extend the ballistic flight path will be excluded from the UA category as well. This removes threats like gliding bombs or hypersonic glide vehicles from the UA set, although they could be remotely operated and definitely possess automated functions. Emerging technologies (e.g. new propulsions, swarming or Artificial Intelligence) might create fringe threat sets, which generally show UA properties, but are currently not considered as such.

An extended definition proposal of Unmanned Aircraft (UA)

Vehicles that use aerostatic or aerodynamic lift, and overall don’t generally fly on a ballistic trajectory can be categorized as an aircraft. These vehicles can be propelled by a  motor (e.g. rotary or jet) to create lift and sustain flight. If these aircraft do not house a pilot within the airframe and are operated remotely using various levels of automated functions, they are considered an UA, excluding cruise missiles.

Cruise Missiles versus Unmanned Aircraft

In general, making the distinction between ordnance and UA is not useful, due to tremendous technical progress. These two categories are not exclusive anymore, while not every ordnance is a UA, a UA can be used as ordnance. In times of mass production, innovative propulsion systems and reliable effect delivery without a pilot on board, the idea of using the vehicle as ordnance itself became more prevalent. While the V1 in WWII initially had a CEP (Circular Error Probable) of more than 10 km and most use cases were aimed at producing terror, today´s cruise missiles have a CEP of 10 meters or less. The cost/benefit ratio between losing the UA while creating a certain effect or enabling it to deliver the same effect while remaining retrievable has shifted significantly in times of precise technological options and relatively cheap production cost, especially for small UA.

Drone versus Unmanned Aircraft

The terms ‘Unmanned Aircraft’ and ‘Drone’, as well as variations such as ‘Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)’ 3 or ‘Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA)’ 4 are often used interchangeably but are actually deliberately defined to reflect certain classes, attributions or certifications of the unmanned systems.

When having to counter these systems, the most relevant factors are overall system complexity and aircraft size. Therefore, this book summarizes the different categories and classes of unmanned systems under the following two terms:

Unmanned Aircraft

The term ‘Unmanned Aircraft’ describes the overall set of vehicles, as described above. However, this book uses the term ‘UA’ to address military systems falling into the NATO Class II and III categories. UA are typically part of a complex system that can include dedicated Ground Control Stations, Mission Control Elements, multiple aircrews, military-grade communication systems, as well as dedicated infrastructure for logistics and maintenance. UA are usually operated by well-trained personnel, often qualified pilots, to safely operate alongside other airspace users. When addressing not only the aircraft but also other system components or the system as a whole, this book uses the term ‘Unmanned Aircraft System’ or ‘UAS’.

The term ‘drone’ is commonly used and widely accepted in the civil domain for all kinds of unmanned systems. Hence, this book uses the term ‘drone’ to address all types of consumer and commercial systems, which are generally smaller and less complex than their military counterparts. ‘Drone’ implies that the system is typically operated by a single, not necessarily qualified individual, from a handheld remote control, in relatively close proximity to the aircraft, and under Line-of-Sight (LOS) conditions. Therefore, this book also uses ‘drone’ for most military systems falling into the NATO Class I category, as their size and complexity is quite comparable to commercially available consumer models and therefore require a similar approach when having to counter them.

‘Unmanned Aircraft’, Record #7915, NATO Terminology Database, [Online]. Available: https://nso.nato.int/natoterm/Web.mvc. [Accessed 15 Jul. 2019].

International civil aviation organization (icao), ‘international standards and recommended practices, annex 6, operation of aircraft, part i’, 25 feb. 2013. [online]. available: https://www.icao.int/safety/fatiguemanagement/frms%20tools/amend- ment%2037%20for%20frms%20sarps%20%28en%29.pdf. [accessed 15 jul. 2019]., the term unmanned aerial vehicle (uav) is no longer in use by nato but is often still used in the civil and public domain., the term remotely piloted aircraft (rpa) is used to indicate that the ua is required to be controlled by a pilot who has been trained and certified to the same standards as a pilot of a manned aircraft..

• About the authors
• Other chapters in this book

Related Publications

joined the German Air Force in 1993. After attending Officers School, he studied Computer Science at the German Armed Forces University in Munich. Since 1998 he built up an extensive background in Ground Based Air Defence, particularly the PATRIOT weapon system. He started as a Tactical Control Officer and subsequently held positions as Reconnaissance Officer, Battery Executive Officer and Battery Commander in various PATRIOT units. Furthermore, he had two non-consecutive assignments in Fort Bliss, Texas. The main task of his first assignment was to conduct bilateral US-GE studies of weapon system behaviour on a tactical level for the German PATRIOT Office.

During his second assignment, he was the Subject Matter Expert (SME) on Integrated Air and Missile Defence at the German Luftwaffe Air Defence Centre. In between, he had an assignment as the A3C in the former Air Force Division. Currently, he is the Integrated Air and Missile Defence / Ballistic Missile Defence SME in the JAPCC.

Lieutenant Colonel Haider began his military career with the German Armed Forces in April 1992. He initially served as a Personnel NCO in the 150th Rocket Artillery Battalion HQ. Following his promotion to Lieutenant in 1998, he took on the role of an MLRS platoon leader within the same battalion. After three years, he transitioned to the position of CIS Branch Head at the 150th Rocket Artillery Battalion HQ. Subsequently, Lieutenant Colonel Haider was assigned to the 325th Tank Artillery Battalion, where he served as a battery commander before assuming command of the maintenance and supply battery. In 2008, he was appointed as the commander of the maintenance and supply company within the 284th Signal Battalion. His responsibilities expanded in 2010 when he became the Deputy Commander of the German support staff for the 1st NATO Signal Battalion. As a follow-on assignment, he served as the Deputy Battalion Commander of the 132nd Rocket Artillery Battalion.

Since 2012, Lieutenant Colonel Haider has been a Subject Matter Expert for Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Countering Unmanned Aircraft Systems within the JAPCC Combat Air Branch. Lieutenant Colonel Haider represents the JAPCC in and contributes to several key NATO groups, including the NATO Joint Capability Group Unmanned Aircraft Systems, the NATO Counter-UAS Working Group, and the NATO Joint Capability Group Maritime Unmanned Systems.

Other Chapters in this Book

Part i - overview, unmanned aircraft system threat vectors, the vulnerabilities of unmanned aircraft system components, a methodology for countering unmanned aircraft systems, part ii - military perspectives, space operations, joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, defensive counter-air operations, offensive counter-air operations, electromagnetic operations, cyberspace operations, strategic communications, force protection considerations, command and control, education and training, part iii - civil perspectives, protection of critical infrastructure, cloud-based command and control for security and drone defence applications, drone forensics, law enforcement, part iv - legal perspectives, arms control of unmanned weapons systems, regulatory frameworks in support of counter-uas, the juridical landscape of countering unmanned aircraft systems, part v - future perspectives, future threats: military uas, terrorist drones, and the dangers of the second drone age, research, development, and acquisition of counter-uas technologies, employing friendly uas for counter-uas operations.

Allied Air Command Lessons from Ukraine

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Electronic Warfare in Ukraine

The Heart of Decision Superiority

It’s a Question of Gender!

Defining the Swarm

Human-Machine Interface: An Evolutionary Necessity

High-Altitude Platform Systems

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Hypersonic Boost-glide Systems and Hypersonic Cruise Missiles: Challenges for the Missile Technology Control Regime

An increasing number of states are pursuing hypersonic missile development programmes, including for hypersonic boost-glide systems and hypersonic cruise missiles. Hypersonic missiles combine hypersonic speed and manoeuvrability, which can result in target ambiguity, render missile defences ineffective and reduce warning times. Some hypersonic missiles are developed as delivery systems both for nuclear and conventional payloads. The combination of these capabilities may have escalatory or destabilizing effects.

The Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) is the main instrument through which states seek to harmonize export control policies to govern the transfer of missile technology. It is key to ensure that the MTCR’s guidelines and control list adequately cover hypersonic missiles and related goods and technologies. This paper seeks to improve the understanding of hypersonic missiles, increase awareness among policymakers and export control officials, and inform the ongoing technical and policy discussions within the MTCR to strengthen efforts to limit the proliferation of hypersonic missiles.

1. Introduction

2. Hypersonic boost-glide systems and hypersonic cruise missiles 

3. Conventional–nuclear entanglement and MTCR controls on dual-capable delivery systems           

4. Applying MTCR export controls to hypersonic boost-glide systems and hypersonic cruise missiles

5. Recommendations

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)/EDITORS

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The Simple Difference Between Ballistic Missiles and Cruise Missiles

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In 2017, North Korea unexpectedly staged a test launch of what was then a new ballistic missile , the Pukguksong-2. The launch took place when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was on a state visit to the United States . There have been many more test launches of ballistic missiles by North Korea since. Between May and October 2019, North Korea launched as many as 12 ballistic missiles or other projectiles. But they have all been just test launches.

Things got real, though, on Jan. 7, 2020, when Iran launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles at two Iraqi military bases housing U.S. troops. This was not a test launch. It was Iran's retaliation for the U.S. drone strike that killed Iran Gen. Qassem Soleimani on Jan. 3, 2020. There were no casualties and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif defended the missile strike on the U.S. bases in Iraq, saying it was an act of "self-defense."

But for the non-military minded among us, these ballistic missile launches — both the constant test launches in North Korea and the intentional strikes on U.S. bases in Iraq — may raise a good question: What exactly is a ballistic missile, anyway? Is there something about the ballistic part that makes a missile even more dangerous? After all, when someone freaks out we say they've "gone ballistic."

According to the Federation of American Scientists , a ballistic missile is one that has a ballistic trajectory over most of its flight path. What that means is that once the missile burns up the fuel that propels it, the missile keeps moving, the same way that a bullet does after it's been fired out of a gun. Once the fuel is gone, the missile's direction can't be altered. It follows a path determined by the speed of its launch and the force of gravity trying to pull it back toward the Earth's surface. Eventually, gravity guides the missile — and its payload, which might be an explosive, a chemical or biological weapon, or a nuclear device — down toward its target.

Ballistic missiles are different than cruise missiles. Cruise missiles are self-propelled for the majority of their time in the air, flying in a relatively straight line and at lower altitudes thanks to a rocket propellant. Think of a ballistic missile's flight path as a large arc up and back down again, while that of a cruise missile — fired from a warship, for instance — is closer to a straight line.

Ballistic missiles first came into use during World War II, when the Germans used a ballistic missile called the V-2 to attack London. British air defenses designed to stop aircraft couldn't stop the V-2s, because the rockets traveled too high into the upper atmosphere and moved too fast.

After the war, the U.S., with the help of captured German technology and scientists, built its own arsenal of even more powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of unleashing nuclear destruction upon targets on the other side of the world. The Soviet Union and China built ICBMs as well, setting up a world where a nuclear war was deterred by the prospect of mutual assured destruction.

The North Korean regime successfully tested intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) in July and November 2017. Its Hwasong-15 ICBM reached an altitude of 2,780 miles (4,475 kilometers) and flew about 590 miles (1,000 kilometers) before landing in the sea off the coast of Japan. Analysts estimate the Hwasong-15 has a potential range of 8,100 miles (13,000 kilometers). If it's fired on a flatter trajectory, it could reach potentially reach anywhere on the U.S. mainland.

Which countries have intercontinental ballistic missiles?

What is meant by ballistic trajectory, what is difference between a ballistic and a cruise missile, how high do ballistic missiles fly, are ballistic missiles nuclear.

Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article:

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Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

April 27, 2017

Fact Sheet: Ballistic vs. Cruise Missiles

Ballistic missiles are powered initially by a rocket or series of rockets in stages, but then follow an unpowered trajectory that arches upwards before descending to reach its intended target. Ballistic missiles can carry either nuclear or conventional warheads.

There are four general classifications of ballistic missiles based on their range, or the maximum distance the missile can travel:

• Short-range: less than 1,000 kilometers (approximately 620 miles), also known as “tactical” ballistic missiles.
• Medium-range: between 1,000 and 3,000 kilometers (approximately 620-1,860 miles), also known as “theater” ballistic missiles.
• Intermediate-range: between 3,000 and 5,500 kilometers (approximately 1,860-3,410 miles)
• Long-range: more than 5,500 kilometers (approximately 3,410 miles), also known as intercontinental or strategic ballistic missiles. Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) can fly much further than the minimum range; for example, Russia could hit Chicago with an ICBM launched from the Krasnoyarsk ICBM base, which is located 9,156 kilometers (5,689 miles) away.

Ballistic missiles have three stages of flight:

Boost Phase begins at launch and lasts until the rocket engine(s) stops firing and the missile begins unpowered flight. Depending on the missile, boost phase can last three to five minutes. Most of this phase takes place in the atmosphere.

Midcourse Phase begins after the rocket(s) stops firing. The missile continues to ascend toward the highest point in its trajectory, and then begins to descend toward Earth. This is the longest phase of a missile’s flight; for ICBMs, it can last around 20 minutes. During midcourse phase, ICBMs can travel around 24,000 kilometers per hour (15,000 miles per hour).

Terminal Phase begins when the detached warhead(s) reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and ends upon impact or detonation. During this phase, which can last for less than a minute, strategic warheads can be traveling at speeds greater than 3,200 kilometers per hour (1,988 miles per hour).

Cruise missiles remain within the atmosphere for the duration of their flight and can fly as low as a few meters off the ground. Flying low to the surface of the earth expends more fuel but makes a cruise missile very difficult to detect.

Cruise missiles are self-guided and use multiple methods to accurately deliver their payload, including terrain mapping, global positioning systems (GPS) and inertial guidance, which uses motion sensors and gyroscopes to keep the missile on a pre-programmed flight path. As advanced cruise missiles approach their target, remote operators can use a camera in the nose of the missile to see what the missile sees. This gives them the option to manually guide the missile to its target or to abort the strike.

To learn about missile defense, check out our fact sheet .

Sources: Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency, Federation of American Scientists .

820 1st Street NE, Suite LL-180 Washington, D.C. 20002 Phone: 202.546.0795

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Questions surround Russia’s use of hypersonic missiles in its latest attack.

Moscow on Thursday fired the largest number of the air-launched weapons used in a single wave since the war began a year ago.

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By John Ismay ,  Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Andrew E. Kramer

• March 9, 2023

Russia’s biggest aerial attack in weeks hit targets across Ukraine on Thursday, using a complex barrage of weapons. Ukraine’s Air Force said that among them were six of Russia’s air-launched hypersonic missiles, known as Kinzhals, or Daggers — the most used in a single wave since the war began a year ago.

Here are the major questions raised by the use of the new missiles.

First, what are hypersonic missiles?

Hypersonic missiles are long-range, highly maneuverable munitions capable of reaching speeds of at least Mach 5 — five times the speed of sound, or more than a mile a second. That speed renders traditional air defense systems essentially useless, because by the time they are detected by ground-based radars, they are already nearly at their target.

China and the United States are in a race to develop and deploy hypersonic missiles. Other countries are also working on the technology, including Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea and South Korea.

How does the Kinzhal work?

The typical hypersonic vehicle carries its warhead to the lower boundary of space atop a traditional long-range missile. After separation, it uses gravity to gain tremendous speed on the descent back to earth. The vehicle may be an unpowered gliding craft, or it may be a cruise missile that uses gravitational acceleration to ignite a special “scramjet” engine that carries it hundreds of miles farther.

The Kinzhal is a little different. It is a modified version of the Russian Army’s Iskander short-range ballistic missile, which is designed to be fired from truck-mounted launchers on the ground. Launching the missile from a warplane at high altitude, instead of from the ground, leaves it with more fuel to use to reach higher speeds.

Aside from its ability to reach hypersonic speeds after its air launch, the Kinzhal is believed to behave like a ground-launched Iskander, meaning it is able to maneuver to make interception difficult. Some Iskanders also can release decoys before impact that are designed to further confuse air-defense radars .

Conventionally armed Iskanders are believed to carry about 1,500 pounds of explosives.

What else is known about the Kinzhal?

Russia originally developed the Kinzhal to breach American anti-missile defense systems and claims it reaches speeds of Mach 10 and greater. The Pentagon has said it is launched by MiG-31 warplanes.

Moscow first said it had deployed the Kinzhal in Ukraine nearly a year ago in an attack on an underground weapons dump , and has periodically claimed its use since.

There is another hypersonic missile Russia claims to have in its arsenal: the Zircon, a cruise missile that can be launched from ships. But Russia did not report test-firing the Zircon during exercises announced by President Vladimir V. Putin in January , and it is not known to have ever been used in combat.

Why are Kinzhals so worrisome for Ukraine?

Ukraine has no weapons capable of shooting down the Kinzhals, according to Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s Air Force.

And their use on Thursday significantly increased the proportion of Russia’s missiles reaching targets. Of the 81 missiles Russia fired overnight and through the morning, Ukraine said that 47 hit their targets, a higher ratio than usual. Ukraine noted that Russia had also fired more ballistic missiles and fewer cruise missiles than usual, a possible factor in the increase in successful strikes.

What are the limitations of the Kinzhal?

Targeting coordinates are loaded into the missile’s operating system before launch, and because of the tremendous speed it achieves in flight, any small deflection — for instance, a control surface on a wing moving slightly too much or too little — can result in a major deviation from the target. That may explain why one Kinzhal appears to have struck a car in Kyiv on Thursday, rather than a target with more military significance.

And like any hypersonic missile, the Kinzhal’s flight path reaches into the uppermost regions of Earth’s atmosphere before arcing back toward the earth for finer maneuvers. It can be detected by space-based sensors, though U.S. defense officials say those systems are insufficient against hypersonics.

Why would Russia use so much of its hypersonic arsenal in one wave?

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency has estimated Russia had, before the volley fired Thursday, no more than 50 Kinzhals, Mr. Ihnat said. Why Russia decided to fire six of them — potentially more than a tenth of its total arsenal — is unclear.

“For one reason or another, they needed a result” this time, Mr. Ihnat said.

But Russia may be able to replenish the Kinzhals relatively easily. Since the Kinzhal is simply a modified version of an existing missile, it could be easier to produce than, say, creating more Zircons, which have to be built from scratch.

Will the use of Kinzhals change the war?

Not necessarily, even if Russia can produce more Kinzhals relatively rapidly. Even though more of Russia’s missiles than usual got through on Thursday, an air war alone will not be decisive.

By comparison, Russia causes far more destruction through the thousands of artillery shells it fires in Ukraine.

And the ground war essentially remains in a grinding stalemate. Many analysts say that Russia’s long-anticipated spring offensive is already underway, but that it is having little impact because its troops and arsenals are so depleted.

John Ismay is a Pentagon correspondent in the Washington bureau and a former Navy explosive ordnance disposal officer. More about John Ismay

Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a correspondent covering international news. He previously worked as a reporter, editor and bureau chief for Reuters and did postings in Nairobi, Abidjan, Atlanta, Jakarta and Accra. More about Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Andrew E. Kramer is the Times bureau chief in Kyiv. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on Russia’s covert projection of power. More about Andrew E. Kramer

The Russian submarine that just showed up off Cuba is one of a new class of subs that has worried the US and NATO for years

• Russian naval ships arrived in Cuba Wednesday ahead of military exercises in the Caribbean.
• One of the vessels, the submarine Kazan, is one of a new class that has worried the US and NATO.
• The Yasen-class subs are hard to track and armed for attacks against land- and sea-based targets.

One of Russia's most advanced new submarines has pulled up off the coast of Cuba ahead of planned military exercises in the area.

The Kazan, a nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine, is one of a relatively new class of subs that has worried the US and Western militaries for years because of its stealth and strike capabilities .

Three Russian ships, along with the Kazan, arrived in Cuba Wednesday for a five-day official visit before a large, simultaneous air and maritime exercise in the Caribbean. The deployment includes the Admiral Gorshkov frigate, which is armed with Zircon hypersonic missiles, another challenge for Western militaries.

While US officials have said they're monitoring the vessels and don't anticipate any imminent danger in the region, the Kazan's arrival is notable. US and NATO officials have long expressed concern over the capabilities of the Kazan and other subs like it.

Russia's Yasen-class submarines, like the Kazan, are formidable threats within Russia's navy, which has long boasted a rather capable submarine fleet. The Russians began work on the class during the Cold War , and the first sub in the class, the Severodvinsk, was commissioned late in 2013.

Around the time the Severodvinsk was commissioned, a Naval Sea Systems Command officer said at a symposium that going forward, the US would "be facing tough potential opponents," adding that "one only has to look at the Severodvinsk."

Later submarines featured updated designs and were designated as Yasen-M class vessels. The Kazan was the second sub of the Yasen class but the first of the new, upgraded subs. It is noticeably smaller and features a quieter nuclear reactor. Western officials have said that their naval forces have had trouble finding these subs or have at times lost track of them at sea.

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The subs' newer, more advanced features make them difficult to track, and they're heavily armed and capable of attacks against land- and sea-based targets with little to no warning. These boats can carry Oniks and Kalibr cruise missiles and, eventually, the new Zircon missiles.

The shift in capability with the emergence of the Yasen-M class submarines suggested a change in use. Per a 2021 Royal United Services Institute analysis , the Kazan's "capacity to launch a range of anti-ship and land attack missiles" suggests that "long-range strike missions appear to be superseding sea lines of communication (SLOC) interdiction as a primary task."

In 2021, US Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, the head of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said that the subs "are designed to deploy undetected within cruise-missile range of our coastlines to threaten critical infrastructure during an escalating crisis."

VanHerck, along with other US officials, have said that the Yasen-class subs are a concern and " on par with ours " and repeatedly warned about the increasing presence of these vessels off of the US coast. A US naval intelligence official previously said that the Russian subs are "holding the United States at risk in some of their patrol areas."

Russia plans to build at least nine Yasen submarines in total, but there are indications that more could be on the way in the future .

Russia's deployment in Cuba serves multiple purposes. It comes before Caribbean air and maritime exercises, the first Russia has held in the area since 2019. It serves to strengthen Russia-Cuba ties, and it demonstrates a show of force to the US amid the war in Ukraine.

Tensions are particularly high after the US hesitantly agreed to allow Ukraine to use its long-range weapons to strike targets in Russian territory .

US officials have said that the appearance of these vessels in the area is not a direct response to those developments or an escalation, noting that Cuba has hosted Russian ships every year from 2013 to 2020, and the Russian exercises are routine.

The vessels in this group, however, are among Russia's most advanced or carrying newer weapons. In the past, NATO officials have flagged the Yasen-class submarines as "one of the big strategic challenges" the alliance faces.

Watch: Ukraine's sea drones vs. Russia's Black Sea Fleet

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US military test launches 2 unarmed intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2 days

The Minuteman III missiles were not armed, meaning they did not have a warhead aboard, but each carried one reentry vehicle.

The United States Air Force and U.S. Space Force conducted two routine test launches of unarmed intercontinental ballistic missiles this week.

The first of the two missiles took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 12:56 a.m. Pacific Time (0756 GMT) on June 4. The second launched at June 6 at 1:46 a.m. Pacific Time (0846 GMT) on June 6, also from Vandenberg. The Minuteman III missiles were not armed, meaning they did not have a warhead aboard, but each carried one reentry vehicle .

The U.S. Air Force regularly conducts such tests in order to "demonstrate that the United States' nuclear deterrent is safe, secure, reliable and effective to deter 21st century threats and reassure our allies," according to an Air Force Global Strike Command statement . The statement stresses that the tests were not launched in response to any "current world events" but were merely routine exercises.

After launch, both the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) flew some 4,200 miles (6,760 kilometers) before their reentry vehicles landed in the U.S. military's Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site in the Marshall Islands' Kwajalein Atoll.

In a statement , Col. Chris Cruise, 377th Test and Evaluation Group Commander praised the joint team of U.S. Air Force personnel and Space Force Guardians for its ability to carry out two tests in such a short period of time.

"The fact that we were able to complete two operational test launches in one week is a testimony to the excellence and professionalism of the Airmen and Guardians who do this mission every day," Cruise said in the statement. "This morning's launch demonstrates our commitment to deterrence as we serve as the cornerstone of security for our allies and partners across the globe."

In another Department of Defense statement , Lt. Col. Casey A. Rumfelt, range director for the Reagan Test Site, said the pace of the two launch exercises was the site's "version of the Super Bowl," and added that a third test will occur in the next few weeks.

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"To my knowledge, we have never had back-to-back Glory Trip missions like we had in early June with a follow-on major test that we will conduct later in the month. Make no mistake, the current level of testing is a good sign for the United States and our allies."

Like all ICBMS, both of the Minuteman III missiles in these tests were launched into suborbital space with a rocket engine before releasing their reentry vehicles back through Earth's atmosphere .

Most of these reentry vehicles travel on ballistic, or free fall, trajectories, although new types of reentry vehicles that can travel at hypersonic speeds and maneuver while gliding toward their targets are in development worldwide.

 —  Space Force aims to launch 1st 'Foo Fighter' satellites in 2027 to track hypersonic threats

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These new types of hypersonic reentry vehicles are much more difficult to defend against due to their ability to maneuver mid-flight, not to mention their high speed. Hypersonic vehicles are those that can travel at speeds of Mach 5 and higher. (Mach 1 is the  speed of sound  — about 767 miles per hour, or 1,234 kilometers per hour, at sea level.)

New types of defenses, including advanced interceptors and sophisticated satellite tracking systems are being developed in attempt to mitigate the threats these hypersonic weapon systems pose.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Brett is curious about emerging aerospace technologies, alternative launch concepts, military space developments and uncrewed aircraft systems. Brett's work has appeared on Scientific American, The War Zone, Popular Science, the History Channel, Science Discovery and more. Brett has English degrees from Clemson University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In his free time, Brett enjoys skywatching throughout the dark skies of the Appalachian mountains.

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• 576th Vet Feel sorry those guys doing back to back launches. It can be crazy enough just doing one. Especially if things go wonky during the last major test before the missle is installed in the silo. Hope they didn't get too wore out. - 98-01 576th FLTS Instrumentation Lab MM3 site tech. Reply
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What are Russian warships doing in the Caribbean?

The frigate Admiral Gorshkov and the nuclear-powered submarine Kazan arrived Wednesday in Havana fresh from exercises in the North Atlantic Ocean.

U.S. forces are keeping close watch on a flotilla of Russian warships that reached Cuba on Wednesday in an apparent show of force by President Vladimir Putin flexing his missiles in the Western Hemisphere.

The port call in Havana, Moscow’s longtime ally, comes less than two weeks after the Biden administration said it would allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weaponry against some military targets inside Russia.

The four Russian vessels arrived in Havana Harbor fresh from military exercises in the North Atlantic Ocean, Russia’s Defense Ministry said. They’re due to stay through Monday.

The ships aren’t carrying nuclear weapons, the Cuban and Russian foreign ministries have said, “so their stop in our country does not represent a threat to the region,” Havana said last week.

Here’s what you need to know.

Russia practiced firing high-precision missiles in the Atlantic

The Russian flotilla includes the frigate Admiral Gorshkov and the nuclear-powered submarine Kazan, a medium tanker and a rescue tugboat. Even without nuclear weapons, the frigate and the submarine are capable of launching Zircon hypersonic missiles, Kalibr cruise missiles and Onyx anti-ship missiles, Russia’s most highly touted modern weapons.

Several hours before entering the Havana harbor, Russian defense officials said, the flotilla completed an exercise in “the use of precision missile weapons.” Sailors used computer simulations to “hit” targets without launching actual missiles.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla. Lavrov affirmed Russia’s “continued support for Havana in its just demand for a complete and immediate end” to Washington’s 62-year embargo on most trade with Cuba and the removal of the country from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

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The visit came on Russia Day, when Russians mark the dissolution of the Soviet Union. State television highlighted extensive coverage of the event in the U.S. media, including clips from CNN. One Russian reporter described the visit as retaliation for Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to strike inside Russia with American weapons.

“Last week, President Vladimir Putin made it clear that it reserves the right for a mirror response — that is, supplying long-range weapons to countries that feel the pressure of the United States,” the Russia 24 reporter said.

Cuba, mired in its worst economic crisis in years, is welcoming its longtime supporter

Cubans lined the Havana waterfront Wednesday to see the Russian ships arrive. The Russians fired 21 salvos in honor of their hosts; the Cubans responded with an artillery salute from the San Carlos de La Cabaña Fortress.

Cuba’s foreign ministry said the visit reflects “the historical friendly relations” between Havana and Moscow, ties that go back to Soviet support for Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution and Moscow’s purchase of sugar, rum and other products to soften the loss of U.S. trade at the outset of the embargo.

Cuba is currently mired in a dire economic crisis, including shortages of food, electricity and fuel, reminiscent of the so-called Special Period of the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and support from Moscow sharply dropped.

Cuba emerged from years of deprivation with the support of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and improved relations with Russia under Putin. Lavrov said Wednesday that Moscow would continue to provide humanitarian support to Cuba.

The Russian foreign ministry thanked Cuba for its “principled position” on Ukraine. Rodríguez Parrilla, the Cuban foreign minister, said the country condemns “the increasingly aggressive stance of the U.S. government and NATO,” including sanctions against Russia.

Lavrov has been a frequent visitor to the region. He traveled in February to Venezuela, where he affirmed Russia’s support for the socialist government of Nicolás Maduro, Chávez’s successor. He stopped in Cuba during that trip also.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel visited Putin in Moscow in May.

The U.S. doesn’t see a threat, but is monitoring the visit

Port calls among friendly nations are common. The Cuban foreign ministry this week announced that a Canadian patrol vessel would arrive in Havana on Friday to commemorate 80 years of uninterrupted diplomatic relations between Havana and Ottawa.

But the U.S. Defense Department has been tracking the Russian visit to Cuba since it was announced June 6. U.S. Navy and Coast Guard vessels are “going to continue to monitor,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Wednesday. ABC News reported that three U.S. Navy destroyers, a Coast Guard Cutter and Canadian and French frigates were keeping watch .

Singh said the Russian exercises didn’t pose a threat to the United States.

“This is not a surprise,” she said. Such “routine naval visits” by the Russians, she said, have occurred “during different administrations.”

A spokesman for U.S. Southern Command said the organization routinely monitors “activities of concern” in its area of responsibility. Authorities anticipate that the Russian vessels might also visit Venezuela. Maduro’s government, also under heavy sanction by the United States, has scheduled a presidential election for July.

Retired Adm. Jim Stavridis, who headed Southern Command from 2006 to 2009, said naval deployments to the Caribbean are “long and difficult” for Russian forces, and provide “good practice for our forces, tracking and monitoring them.”

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, also said there was no cause for American concern. “Military drills are a normal practice in various regions of the world, especially for such a major maritime power as the Russian Federation,” Peskov told reporters on Thursday.

Putin is showing he ‘still has the ability to operate in the U.S. sphere of influence’

Russian forces have made several visits to Cuba and Venezuela in recent decades. In 2018, Moscow sent two supersonic, nuclear-capable Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela for a brief stop. The next year, as the Trump administration stepped up efforts to oust Maduro, Russia dispatched 100 troops and equipment to Venezuela and signed an agreement allowing it to send ships.

Of course, the most famous Russian visit to the region came in 1962, when the U.S. discovery of Soviet missile sites in Cuba brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev resolved the two-week Cuban missile crisis peacefully with an agreement that each side would withdraw missiles deployed near the other and that they would establish direct communications — the so-called red telephone — to forestall similar crises in the future.

Videos now of a Russian submarine arriving in Cuba, political scientist Vladimir Rouvinski said, help Moscow show that “efforts by the United States to diminish their presence everywhere, in particular in Latin America, are not working.”

“We have to see that Russia is not willing to abandon Latin America,” said Rouvinski, of Icesi University in Colombia, even as its military is consumed by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Putin aims to signal that “he still has the ability to operate in the U.S. sphere of influence,” said Cynthia Arnson, a distinguished fellow at the Wilson Center’s Latin America Program.

The U.S. stages similar exercises near Russia and China

The United States has a long history of deploying the Navy and other forces to demonstrate its range and capabilities in support of allies and against adversaries.

In May, the Destroyer USS Halsey conducted what the Navy called a “Freedom of Navigation Operation” to challenge “restrictions on innocent passage imposed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, and Vietnam.”

A spokesperson for China’s Eastern Theater Command accused the United States of having “publicly hyped” the ship’s transit through the Taiwan Strait , the Associated Press reported. Chinese Navy Senior Capt. Li Xi said the command sent naval and air forces to monitor.

Last year, the destroyer USS Nitze and the amphibious command ship USS Mount Whitney made separate port calls to Istanbul on the Bosporus. That’s roughly 20 miles from the Black Sea, where Ukraine has used sea drones and missiles to attack a Russian fleet .

Ukraine-Russia war – live: Leaders in Switzerland for major peace summit as Zelensky rejects Putin ‘ultimatum’

LIVE – Updated at 23:30

Almost 100 nations are gathering in Switzerland this weekend to participate in peace talks led by president Volodymyr Zelensky , as he seeks to drum up support for a plan to end the Ukraine conflict.

US vice president Kamala Harris, French president Emmanuel Macron and the leaders of Germany, Italy, Britain, Canada and Japan are among those set to attend the 15-16 June meeting at the Swiss mountaintop resort of Buergenstock.

Russia was not invited to the talks, while China – its most important ally – has refused to attend.

Seeking to distract from the Swiss government-hosted talks near Lucerne, Vladimir Putin set out yesterday the terms under which Russia would agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine.

They follow a similar pattern to previous statements by Russian officials and include conditions Ukraine has already rejected outright, including the permanent transfer of four eastern Ukrainian provinces Russia is currently occupying parts of, and a formal commitment that Kyiv will never join Nato.

Zelensky dismissed it as an unacceptable “ultimatum” while the US said Putin could “end [the war] today if he chose”.

World leaders reach Switzerland as Zelensky’s peace talks begin today

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Putin treats global law like ‘toilet paper’, says Kyiv official ahead of peace summit

Freezing Ukraine's conflict is a recipe for further war, EU's Von der Leyen

Freezing the conflict in Ukraine is not an answer but a recipe for future wars of aggression, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a Ukraine summit in the Swiss resort of Buergenstock.

“Freezing the conflict today, with foreign troops occupying Ukrainian land, is not the answer. It is a recipe for future wars of aggression,” she said in her speech.

“Instead we need to support a comprehensive, just and sustainable peace for Ukraine. One that restores Ukraine’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity.”

Kamala Harris announces $1.5 billion in Ukraine aid at Switzerland peace summit

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris pledged America’s unwavering support for Ukraine and announced more than $1.5 billion in aid for the country’s energy sector and its humanitarian situation as a result of Russia’s 27-month invasion.

“This war remains an utter failure for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin,” Harris said during a bilateral meeting with Zelenskiy. “It is in our interest to uphold international norms,” she added, pledging U.S. support for the country.

The $1.5 billion includes $500 million in new funding for energy assistance and the redirecting of $324 million in previously announced funds toward emergency energy infrastructure repair and other needs in Ukraine, the vice president’s office said.

“These efforts will help Ukraine respond to Russia’s latest attacks on Ukraine energy infrastructure by supporting repair and recovery, improving Ukraine’s resilience to energy supply disruptions, and laying the groundwork to repair and expand Ukraine’s energy system,” Harris’ office said.

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Zelensky believes history will be made at Swiss peace summiy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday predicted “history being made” at the Swiss-hosted conference that aims to plot the first steps toward peace in Ukraine even though experts and critics don’t expect any major breakthroughs because Russia isn’t attending.

The presidents of Ecuador, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Somalia joined dozens of Western heads of state, other senior government leaders and high-level envoys at the meeting, in the hopes that Russia could join in one day.

In a brief statement to reporters alongside Swiss President Viola Amherd at the outset of the summit, Zelensky cast the gathering as a success, saying: “We have succeeded in bringing back to the world the idea that joint efforts can stop war and establish a just peace.”

“I believe that we will witness history being made here at the summit,” he said.

Russian plane violated Swedish airspace on Friday, military says

A Russian military aircraft briefly violated Swedish airspace east of the Baltic island of Gotland on Friday and was met by Swedish fighter jets, the Nordic country’s armed forces said on Saturday.

The Swedish armed forces said in a statement that the Russian military aircraft, a SU-24, had been hailed with a warning but failed to respond after which two Swedish Gripen fighters were sent up to meet it.

Sweden’s military said the airspace violation had been brief.

“The Russian actions are not acceptable and show a lack of respect for our territorial integrity,” Swedish air force chief Jonas Wikman said. “We followed the entire chain of events and were in place to intervene.”

Fire as Russian rocket nearly strikes Mykolayiv settlement

The Russian army continues to put pressure on Ukrainian frontlines with artillery shelling, airstrikes, and a large number of attack drones.

In an update on Saturday, the Southern Defense Forces of Ukraine said on Telegram: “The enemy launched a rocket attack on the Mykolayiv region.

“As a result of the impact, a fire broke out in an open area outside the settlement, which was promptly extinguished.

“The occupiers continue to press with artillery fire, carry out airstrikes, use a large number of strike drones of various types, and actively conduct aerial reconnaissance. Over the past day, the flight of 213 reconnaissance UAVs was recorded in the operational zone.”

Zelensky said ‘we are dealing with terrorists’ on eve of peace summitt

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to SkyTG24 on the eve of the opening of the inaugural Peace Summit in Switzerland.

“The road to peace is a long one because we are dealing with terrorists, and we must follow the right path, based on the UN Charter and international law.

“We must have the same basis. And we are doing this without breaking the law, without violating people’s rights,” he said.

Ukraine dismissed ceasefire conditions announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday as “absurd”, saying he was trying to mislead world powers and undermine genuine peace efforts.

Putin said in a speech Russia would end the war in Ukraine only if Kyiv agreed to drop its NATO ambitions and hand over the entirety of four provinces claimed by Moscow.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry described his words as “manipulative statements aimed at misleading the international community (and) undermining diplomatic efforts to achieve a just peace”.

Ukraine ‘repels seven Russian attacks’ in past 24 hours

Ukrainian forces said they had repelled seven enemy attacks in Orikhiv and one on the bank of the Dnipro River.

The Southern Defense Forces of Ukraine said on Telegram: “In the operational zone of the Southern Defence Forces, daily counter-battery confrontation and repelling enemy assaults continues.

“The enemy does not abandon his intention to knock out our units from their occupied positions.

“Over the past day, the occupiers have carried out 7 assaults in the Orihiv direction. They had no success.

“On the left bank of the Dnipro, in the temporarily occupied Kherson Oblast, the enemy launched 1 assault. Having suffered losses, he retreated to his original positions. The defence forces continue to carry out comprehensive measures to maintain positions.”

Putin’s peace proposals aren’t serious, says German chancellor

The G7 leaders did not discuss Russian president Vladimir Putin’s purported proposal for peace on Friday “since everyone knew they were not serious”, German chancellor Olaf Scholz said.

“Everyone knows that this was proposal wasn’t meant seriously, but had something to do with the peace conference in Switzerland,” he told ZDF television in an interview.

Speaking from Italy shortly before leaving for Switzerland, where the Ukraine peace conference opens today, Scholz said Putin’s proposals – for Ukraine to fully abandon four provinces Russia has occupied in part, stop fighting and drop its ambition of Nato membership – were aimed only at distracting from the summit.

World leaders are gathering in Switzerland for talks aimed at pressuring Russia to end its war in Ukraine.

World leaders gather in Switzerland with Putin noticeably absent

The presidents of Ecuador, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Somalia will join many Western heads of state and government and other leaders at a conference this weekend, aiming to plot out first steps toward peace in Ukraine – with Russia notably absent.

Swiss officials hosting the conference say more than 50 heads of state and government, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, will join the gathering at the Burgenstock resort overlooking Lake Lucerne. Some 100 delegations including European bodies and the United Nations will be on hand.

Who will show up - and who will not - has become one of the key stakes of a meeting that critics say will be useless without the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and is pushing ahead with the war.

US Vice President Kamala Harris is set to attend while Turkey and Saudi Arabia have dispatched their foreign ministers. Key developing countries such as Brazil, an observer at the event, India and South Africa will be represented at lower levels.

Ukraine employs a flexible defence amid wait for new Western ammo

Ukrainian firepower has been improving since US lawmakers approved a much-needed military aid package this spring, though not quickly enough to halt the Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine.

New weapons and ammunition have been trickling to the front line since Joe Biden signed off on the massive aid package in April. But it will take weeks, if not months, for Ukraine to fully replenish its depleted stocks.

Kyiv has turned to a bend-but-don’t-break strategy to buy time until it can get more Western weapons and ammunition to the front. By ceding some territory, Ukraine has been able to fight from better defended positions, according to interviews with senior Ukrainian military leaders, soldiers and officers in the field, and analysts.

Although the influx of Western munitions has shrunk Kyiv’s glaring artillery disadvantage, Moscow’s forces are still gaining ground along the snaking front line and will likely continue to do so through the summer, when the drier ground and longer days will only aid their push.

Ukraine is still on the defensive in the Donetsk region, enabling Moscow’s forces to inflict heavy losses during Ukrainian troop rotations and bringing them closer to crucial Ukrainian supply routes.

Read more here:

Ukraine employs a flexible defense while waiting for new Western ammo to get to the front

Kyiv’s diplomatic clout to be tested in Swiss peace talks

Peace talks taking place in Switzerland today and tomorrow represent a test of Ukraine’s diplomatic clout, with China’s decision to stay away already limiting the extent to which the summit can put pressure on Russia.

Russia has not been invited to the talks, while the Kremlin dismissed the event as a waste of time and claimed it had no interest in attending. China had said it would consider taking part, but ultimately declined because Russia would not be there.

Without China, hopes of isolating Moscow have faded, while recent military reverses have put Kyiv on the back foot. The war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has also diverted attention from Ukraine.

“The summit risks showing the limits of Ukrainian diplomacy,” said Richard Gowan, UN Director at the International Crisis Group. “Nonetheless, it is also a chance for Ukraine to remind the world that it is defending the principles of the UN Charter.”

“It’s clear that at the moment, in geopolitical terms, for China the special relationship with Russia takes precedence over any other consideration,” said Bernardino Regazzoni, a former Swiss ambassador to China.

“What can (Zelensky) hope for out of it?” said Daniel Woker, a former Swiss ambassador. “Another small step forward in international solidarity with Ukraine as the victim of Russian aggression.”

The talks are expected to focus on broader concerns triggered by the war, such as food and nuclear security and freedom of navigation, and a draft of the final declaration identifies Russia as the aggressor in the conflict, sources said.

Putin promises ceasefire if Ukraine withdraws troops from four occupied Ukrainian regions

Vladimir Putin has promised to “immediately” order a ceasefire in Ukraine and begin negotiations if Kyiv starts to withdraw troops from the four occupied Ukrainian regions and renounces plans to join Nato.

Such a deal appears a non-starter for Kyiv, which wants to join the military alliance and has demanded that Russia withdraw its troops from all of its territory.

“We will do it immediately,” Mr Putin said in a speech at the Russian foreign ministry in Moscow.

His remarks came as leaders of the G7 leaders met in Italy and as Switzerland prepared to host scores of world leaders this weekend to try to map out first steps toward peace in Ukraine.

Mr Putin said his proposal is aimed at a “final resolution” of the conflict in Ukraine rather than “freezing it”, and stressed that the Kremlin is “ready to start negotiations without delay”.

Broader demands for peace that the Russian leader listed included Ukraine‘s non-nuclear status, restrictions on its military force and protecting the interests of the Russian-speaking population in the country.

“We’re urging to turn this tragic page of history and to begin restoring, step-by-step, restore the unity between Russia and Ukraine and in Europe in general,” Mr Putin said.

Mr Putin’s remarks represented a rare occasion in which he clearly laid out his conditions for ending the war in Ukraine, but it did not include any new demands.

World leaders are joining Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky at a summit in Switzerland starting today to explore ways of ending the deadliest conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

Russia hasn’t been invited to the event and China has declined, but the Swiss government says 92 countries will be represented.US vice president Kamala Harris, French president Emmanuel Macron and the leaders of Germany, Italy, Britain, Canada and Japan are among those set to attend the 15-16 June meeting at the Swiss mountaintop resort of Buergenstock.

India, which has helped Moscow survive the shock of economic sanctions, is expected to send a delegation. Turkey and Hungary, which similarly maintain cordial ties with Russia, will be represented by their foreign ministers.

But despite months of intense Ukrainian and Swiss lobbying, some others will not be there, most notably China, a key consumer of Russian oil and supplier of goods that help Moscow maintain its manufacturing base.

“This meeting is already a result,” Zelensky said in Berlin earlier this week, while acknowledging the challenge of maintaining international support as the war, now well into its third year, grinds on.

Organisers preparing a joint statement have battled to strike a balance between condemning Russia’s actions and securing as many participants as possible, diplomats say.

A final draft of the summit declaration refers to Russia’s “war” against Ukraine, and also underlines commitment to the UN charter and respect for international law, according to two people familiar with the document.

Switzerland wants the summit to pave the way for a “future peace process” in which Russia takes part – and to determine which country could take on the next phase.

Several diplomats said Saudi Arabia is among the favourites, with other Middle Eastern states also possible.

Zelensky visited Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to discuss the summit with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister will attend, Switzerland said.

Vladimir Putin has claimed that more than 600,000 Russian troops are fighting in Ukraine as his 27-month-old invasion drags on.

Speaking at a public event with Russian military personnel, Putin claimed there were 617,000 military personnel fighting in Ukraine in December 2023.

This is the first time Putin has publicly acknowledged deployment of hundreds of thousands of his soldiers in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency’s spokesperson Andrii Yusov said that the true number of Russian troops in Ukraine on 15 December was 450,000 and Putin is exaggerating the figures to “increase information pressure” on the war-hit nation.

Kyiv’s tally of Russian soldiers killed, wounded or captured fighting in Ukraine includes more than 500,000 Russian troops.

A declassified US intelligence report in December said that Russia had lost 315,000 troops in Ukraine since the start of the full-scale invasion, representing nearly 90 per cent of the military personnel it had in February 2022.

Armenian leader announces plan to leave Russia-dominated security alliance as ties with Moscow sour

The leader of Armenia on Wednesday declared his intention to pull out of a Russia-dominated security alliance of several ex-Soviet nations as tensions rise between the two allies.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said his government will decide later when to leave the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, a grouping that includes Russia and the former Soviet Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Amid the widening rift with Russia, Armenia earlier froze its participation in the alliance, canceled its involvement in joint military drills and snubbed CSTO summits.

Kamala Harris to address Ukraine summit in Switzerland, meet Zelensky

US vice president Kamala Harris will attend the international Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland starting today, where she will meet with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky and address world leaders.

She will stress that the outcome of the war in Ukraine affects the entire world, a US official said, and push for the maximum number of countries to back the notion that Russia’s invasion violates the UN Charter’s founding principles and that Ukraine‘s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected.

Ms Harris, who will spend less than 24 hours at the gathering in Lucerne, will be standing in for president Joe Biden at the event.

Ms Harris will meet Mr Zelensky and address the summit’s plenary session. Mr Biden met his Ukrainian counterpart both at the G7 summit, where they signed a US-Ukraine security agreement, and in France for events surrounding the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

The president will be returning to the United States after his participation at the G7 summit in Italy to attend a fundraiser for his re-election campaign in Los Angeles.

Zelensky meets Pope ahead of peace summit

Volodymyr Zelensky met Pope Francis yesterday and spoke to him about “Russian aggression and terror” and thanked the sovereign of Vatican city for participation in the peace talks.

“I met with @Pontifex and thanked His Holiness for his prayers for peace in Ukraine, his spiritual closeness to our people, and humanitarian aid for Ukrainians. I informed the Pope about the consequences of Russian aggression, its air terror, and the difficult energy situation,” he said on X.

The Ukrainian war-time leader said he is looking forward to seeing the Pope play a role in establishing peace.

“We discussed the Peace Formula, the Holy See’s role in establishing a just and lasting peace, and expectations for the Global Peace Summit. I thanked the Holy See for its participation in the Summit and highlighted its efforts aimed at bringing peace closer, particularly returning Ukrainian children abducted by Russia.”

US submarine pulls into Guantanamo Bay a day after Russian warships arrive in Cuba

A U.S. Navy submarine has arrived in Guantanamo Bay , Cuba , in a show of force as a fleet of Russian warships gather for planned military exercises in the Caribbean .

U.S. Southern Command said the USS Helena, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, pulled into the waters near the U.S. base in Cuba on Thursday, just a day after a Russian frigate, a nuclear-powered submarine, an oil tanker and a rescue tug crossed into Havana Bay after drills in the Atlantic Ocean.

The stop is part of a “routine port visit” as the submarine travels through Southern Command’s region, it said in a social media post.

Western leaders have called out Russian president Vladimir Putin’s sudden plan to “dictate peace” and end the conflict in Ukraine.

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said at Nato headquarters in Brussels that Putin “has illegally occupied sovereign Ukrainian territory. He is not in any position to dictate to Ukraine what they must do to bring about a peace.”

Austin added that Putin “started this war with no provocation. He could end it today if he chose to do that.”

Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said: “This is not a peace proposal. This is a proposal of more aggression, more occupation, and it demonstrates in a way that that Russia’s aim is to control Ukraine.”

Putin said if “Kyiv and Western capitals” reject his offer, “it is their business, their political and moral responsibility for continuing the bloodshed.”

Putin warns West’s ‘theft’ of Russian assets in G7 deal won’t go unpunished

Vladimir Putin has denounced the freezing of Russian assets by the West as “theft” and vowed that it would not go “unpunished” in a speech at the Russian foreign ministry yesterday.

Mr Putin’s remarks came on the heels of a deal by G7 nations for a $50bn loan package for Ukraine using frozen Russian assets.

The Russian president also accused Western countries of “destroying the system that they created and which for many decades ensured their prosperity and allowed them to consume more than they earn through debts”.

“Despite all the scheming, theft will remain theft, and it will not go unpunished,” he said.

Watch here:

Putin says West’s ‘theft’ of Russian assets in G7 deal won’t go unpunished

Ukrainian attacks kill six in Russia’s Belgorod region

At least six people were killed in Ukrainian attacks on southern Russia’s Belgorod region yesterday, officials said.

Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said four bodies had been pulled from the rubble of a multi-floor apartment building hit by Ukrainian shelling in the border town of Shebekino.

A ministry statement posted after midnight said 50 per cent of the rubble from the site had been cleared. Pictures on the ministry’s Telegram channel showed a crane clearing debris and the building’s facade shattered, with one stairwell collapsed.

Regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said a Ukrainian drone had struck a car in a village near Shebekino, killing the driver. He said a woman was killed in her home when it was struck by rocket fire in the village of Oktyabrsky, further west.

Ukraine has staged frequent attacks on Belgorod and other Russian border regions in recent months.

President Vladimir Putin cited attacks on Belgorod as grounds for a cross-border incursion last month into Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.

G7 leaders agree to lend Ukraine billions backed by Russia's frozen assets. Here's how it will work

Leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies have agreed to engineer a $50bn loan to help Ukraine in its fight for survival that would use interest earned on profits from Russia’s frozen central bank assets as collateral.

Details of the deal were still being hashed out as G7 leaders gathered for a summit in Italy, but the money could reach Kyiv before the end of the year. That’s according to a French official who confirmed the agreement Wednesday ahead of a formal announcement at the summit.

It will be up to technical experts to work through the details.

The US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that the goal is “to provide the necessary resources to Ukraine now for its economic energy and other needs so that it’s capable of having the resilience necessary to withstand Russia’s continuing aggression.”

Another goal is to get the money to Ukraine fast.

Here’s how the plan would work:

NATO approves a plan to speed security aid and training to Ukraine's beleaguered armed forces

NATO defense ministers on Friday approved a plan to provide reliable long-term security aid and military training for Ukraine after delays in Western deliveries of funds, arms and ammunition helped invading Russian forces to seize the initiative on the battlefield.

Kyiv’s Western backers have mostly concentrated their efforts through the Pentagon-run Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a forum for around 50 countries to drum up the weapons and ammunition the war-ravaged country needs most.

The new plan would be a complementary effort. Announcing the move after chairing a meeting of defense ministers in Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that the effort would be headquartered at a U.S. military base in Wiesbaden, Germany and involve almost 700 staff.

Putin’s conditions to end war are ‘ultimatum’, says Zelensky

President Volodymyr Zelensky told Italy’s SkyTG24 news channel that Vladimir Putin’s comments about ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine amounted to an ultimatum, carefully timed to appear just before the Swiss summit.

Putin announced yesterday that Russia would end the war in Ukraine only if Kyiv agreed to drop its Nato ambitions and hand over the entirety of four provinces claimed by Moscow, demands Kyiv swiftly rejected as tantamount to surrender.

“It is clear he (Putin) understands that there will be the peace summit. It is clear he understands the majority in the world are on Ukraine’s side, on the side of life,” he said.

“And on the eve of the summit, amid air raid sirens, the killing of people and missile attacks, he speaks as though he is issuing some sort of ultimatum.”

Mr Zelensky’s adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said the Russian president is asking Kyiv to concede geopolitical sovereignty.

“He is offering for Ukraine to admit defeat. He is offering for Ukraine to legally give up its territories to Russia. He is offering for Ukraine to sign away its geopolitical sovereignty,” the official said.

Wars drive number of forcibly displaced people to record high, UN says

The number of people forcibly displaced in the world through wars, persecution and disasters, natural and man -made, rose to a record 117.3 million last year with the situation likely to get even worse, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has said.

Forced displacement has continued to rise in the first four months of this year, and the total of those affected is expected to reach 120 million in the near future, with no end to global strife in sight.

“These are refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced people, people being forced away by conflict, by persecution, by different and increasingly complex forms of violence,” said Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Ukraine war produced more emissions than Netherlands in a year, new report claims

The war in Ukraine has produced more emissions than the country of Netherlands does in a year, a new report has claimed.

The report, published on Thursday by Ukraine’s environment ministry in collaboration with climate NGOs, claims the war, now in its third year, has led to the emission of about 175 million tonnes of carbon dioxide , equivalent to annual emissions produced by 90 million cars or the whole of the Netherlands.

The number includes emissions already released and future emission from work to repair the destruction caused by the war.

ICC probes cyberattacks in Ukraine as possible war crimes - sources

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) are investigating alleged Russian cyberattacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure as possible war crimes, four sources familiar with the case have told Reuters.

It is the first confirmation that attacks in cyberspace are being investigated by international prosecutors, which could lead to arrest warrants if enough evidence is gathered.

The probe is examining attacks on infrastructure that endangered lives by disrupting power and water supplies, cutting connections to emergency responders or knocking out mobile data services that transmit air raid warnings, one official said.

ICC prosecutors are working alongside Ukrainian teams to investigate “cyberattacks committed from the beginning of the full-scale invasion” in February 2022, said the official, who declined to be named because the probe is not finished.

Two other sources close to the ICC prosecutor’s office confirmed they were looking into cyberattacks in Ukraine and said they could go back as far as 2015, the year after Russia‘s seizure and unilateral annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

Moscow has previously denied that it carries out cyberattacks, and officials have cast such accusations as attempts to incite anti-Russian sentiment.

Ukraine is collecting evidence to support the ICC prosecutor’s investigation.

Ukraine's Zelenskiy says Putin's ceasefire offer cannot be trusted

The ceasefire offer from Russian President Vladimir Putin is an ultimatum which cannot be trusted, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday.

Speaking to Italy’s SkyTG24 news channel on the sidelines of a G7 summit, Zelensky said he believed Putin would not stop his military offensive even if his ceasefire demands were met.

Finland will host a NATO land command and troops

Finland will host a new land command unit of the NATO military alliance, Minister of Defence Antti Hakkanen told reporters on Friday following a meeting of the alliance in Brussels.

After decades of military non-alignment, Finland joined NATO last year in response to neighbouring Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine.

“I’m pleased to state that today all NATO member states have given their political consent to Finland’s key goals in its NATO integration,” Hakkanen said.

“Finland will host a NATO command and there will be land force presence in Finland,” he added.

Hakkanen said the Finnish NATO command will have as a task to direct land warfare operations in northern Europe and in Scandinavia.

“With these decisions, the security of Finland and at the same time the security of Northern Europe is strengthened, and they significantly benefit the security of the entire alliance,” he said.

Ukraine arrives at Euro 2024 to a patriotic welcome and vivid reminder of the war at home

With patriotic songs broadcast and thousands of exiled Ukrainians in the stadium, the men’s national team was made to feel at home at its first training in Germany for the European Championship.

After the national anthem played, and before the warmups began, there was a vivid reminder of the war at home that is a constant and uniting force for this Ukraine squad.

Each player had a ball to give to a fan and Oleksandr Zinchenko presented his to a military veteran who had prosthetic legs below each knee.

Triumphant Meloni holds court at G7 summit as fellow leaders face uncertain futures

Basking in her recent European election success, a triumphant Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni is holding court at a G7 summit marked by the uncertain political future s facing her fellow leaders.

With her contemporaries in Puglia contending with challenging domestic elections or troubling poll ratings, the Italian premier alone has entered the summit from a position of stability, seeking to further her own agenda for Italy .

While the Ukraine war and stability brought by Joe Biden’s US presidency had lent unity to proceedings in recent years, the prospect of Donald Trump’s return and a number of other elections has imbued this week’s summit with a different sense of urgency to reach agreements while the status quo still remains in place.

Triumphant Meloni holds court at G7 summit marked by uncertainty

Biden and Zelensky strike long-awaited security deal: ‘We’re going to stand with Ukraine’

President Joe Biden on Thursday announced three new measures that he said will create “a stronger foundation” for Ukraine in its bloody war against Russia: a sweeping bilateral security agreement between the United States and Ukraine, a $50 billion loan for Kyiv backed by the Group of Seven countries, and new sanctions against Russian individuals and entities.

Speaking alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Puglia, Italy, Biden said those “three major steps” would show Russian President Vladimir Putin that he cannot wait out or divide the western alliance, which will remain on Kyiv’s side “until they prevail in this war.”

Biden and Zelensky strike 10-year security deal: ‘We’re going to stand with Ukraine’

A peace summit for Ukraine opens in Switzerland, but Russia won't be taking part

Switzerland will host scores of world leaders this weekend to try to map out first steps toward peace in Ukraine even though Russia , which launched and is continuing the war, won’t take part.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government didn’t want Russia involved, and the Swiss — aware of Moscow’s reservations about the talks — didn’t invite Russia. The Swiss insist Russia must be involved at some point, and hope it will join the process one day.

Ukrainians too are considering that possibility, Zelenskyy’s top adviser says.

Russian forces ‘deliberately starved’ Ukrainians in Mariupol, new report claims

Russian forces deliberately starved Ukrainians in Mariupol as a tactic of war by targeting their water, food and medical facilities before taking the strategic port city in 2022, according to an investigation by an international human rights group.

Satellite imagery showing evidence of attacks on civilian infrastructure in the city, including food distribution centres, was collected by Global Rights Compliance’s Starvation Mobile Justice Team, and relate to the first 85 days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine before the fall of Mariupol .

In a report on “Russia’s siege, starvation, and capture of Mariupol city”, the rights group said its investigators analysed reams of satellite imagery as well as pictures, videos, public statements and digital data to make the assessment. The investigation took about a year to complete.

Luxembourg joins Czech-led ammunition drive for Ukraine, minister says

Luxembourg has joined a Czech-led initiative to buy ammunition for Ukraine, the Czech defence minister said on Friday.

Prague said in May that it had contributions of more than 1.6 billion euros that could cover half a million shells this year for Ukraine as it fights Russia‘s invasion.

“Today, Luxembourg joined the countries that will contribute financially to the Czech ammunition initiative,” Jana Cernochova said in a post on social media platform X.

Cernochova did not say how much money Luxembourg was contributing.

Ukraine has been urging Western allies to step up military aid to help it repel Russian forces, now well into the third year of their invasion.

Here is the latest on Russia from the G7 summit in Italy

• The leaders agreed on an outline deal on Thursday to provide $50 billion of loans for Ukraine using interest from Russian sovereign assets frozen after Moscow invaded its neighbour in 2022.
• The summit’s communique includes a pledge to continue applying significant pressure on Russian revenues from energy and other commodities, including by improving the efficacy of the oil price cap policy.
• The statement said the G7 would take additional sanctions on “those engaged in deceptive practices while transporting Russian oil” and raise the costs of Russia‘s war by building on the comprehensive package of sanctions and economic measures already in place.
• Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and the United States promised sanctions against entities that helped Russia circumvent sanctions on its oil by transporting it fraudulently.

Canada's defense investment in the Arctic puts it on track to meet NATO guideline, minister says

Canada looks on track to meet NATO’s military spending guideline soon, Defense Minister Bill Blair said Friday, notably by boosting investment in the Arctic near its shared border with Russia as the region warms quickly due to climate change.

After Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, NATO allies agreed to halt budget cuts and move toward spending 2% of their gross domestic product on defense within a decade. Canada was barely spending 1% at the time.

Last year, as it became clear that Russia’s war with Ukraine would grind on, they decided that 2% should be a spending minimum. According to NATO figures, Canada was estimated to be spending 1.33% of GDP on its military budget in 2023.

“My defense spending budget will increase by 27% next year over this year,” Blair said at a meeting with his NATO counterparts in Brussels . “We’ve begun the important processes of acquiring the additional capabilities that we require (and) to meet NATO’s requirements of us.”

He said that Canada is investing “quite significantly in the high Arctic” and building new military capabilities like maritime sensors that can detect threats.

Zelensky says Putin’s ceasefire offer cannot be trusted

Putin said in a speech earlier in the day that Russia would end the war in Ukraine if Kyiv agreed to drop its NATO ambitions and hand over the entirety of four provinces claimed by Moscow.

“These are ultimatum messages that are no different from messages from the past,” the Ukrainian leader said in remarks translated and aired in Italian via an interpreter.

“He will not stop”, Zelenskiy said about Putin, making a parallel with German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s expansionist drive before the outbreak of World War II.

“It is the same thing that Hitler used to do (...) This is why we should not trust these messages,” Zelensky added.

Putin in "no position" to make demands of Ukraine for peace: US defense secretary

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in “no position” to make demands on Ukraine to end the war, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Friday, as he touted Kyiv’s military successes confronting Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

Putin said earlier on Friday that Russia would end the war in Ukraine only if Kyiv agreed to drop its NATO ambitions, hand over the entirety of four provinces claimed by Moscow, and carry out a demilitarization.

“He is not in any position to dictate to Ukraine what they must do to bring about peace,” Austin told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Putin’s ‘peace conditions’ repeat old demands

In his speech at the Russian foreign ministry today, Vladimir Putin also listed broader demands including: Ukraine‘s non-nuclear status, restrictions on its military force and protecting the interests of the Russian-speaking population in the country.

“We’re urging to turn this tragic page of history and to begin restoring, step-by-step, restore the unity between Russia and Ukraine and in Europe in general,” Putin said.

Putin’s remarks represented a rare occasion in which he clearly laid out his conditions for ending the war in Ukraine, but it did not include any new demands.

The Kremlin has said before that Kyiv should recognise its territorial gains and drop its bid to join Nato.

Russia does not fully control either of the four regions it illegally annexed in 2022, Mr Putin said on Friday that Kyiv should withdraw from them entirely and essentially cede them to Moscow within their administrative borders.

In Zaporizhzhia in the southeast, Russia still does not control the region’s namesake administrative capital of 700,000 people, and in the neighbouring Kherson region, Moscow withdrew from Kherson’s biggest city and capital of the same name in November 2022.

Turkey to tell Ukraine summit that Moscow should be there, source says

Turkey’s foreign minister will tell this weekend’s summit aimed at discussing ways to end the war in Ukraine that a meeting with both Kyiv and Moscow present would yield more results, a Turkish diplomatic source said on Friday.

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will join world leaders at the summit in Switzerland, to which Russia is not invited. NATO ally and Black Sea littoral state Turkey has sought to maintain good ties with both Kyiv and Moscow during the war, offering to host peace talks or mediate.

“(Fidan) will point out that a summit that all sides attend has a higher probability of yielding results,” the source said, adding he would also warn against the growing risk of the usage of weapons of mass destruction.

The source said Fidan would also reiterate Turkey’s call for peace talks between Ukraine and Russia to reach a negotiated end to the war.

Turkey supports Ukraine‘s territorial integrity and provides it with military support, but also opposes Western sanctions on Moscow.

Tom Keatinge, the founding Director of the Centre for Finance and Security (CFS) at Royal United Services Institute, spoke to Tom Watling about the G7 deal latest deal on Russian assets.

He said: “The fact that it has taken so long to come to a decision on central bank assets does not reflect a spirit of urgency in the West.

“We can expect Russia to respond with a spirit of urgency. That could include expropriation of Western businesses. It is already very difficult for Western business to leave Russia without paying huge taxes.

“I think we can expect to see a backlash, an economic backlash from Russia. I suspect we would also see a military backlash. We know that everytime Zelensky stands up and makes a high profile speech, the volume of missiles and drones fired at Kyiv increases, as happened this week.

“The point is that if we adopt the mindset that we are at economic war with Russia, we should expect there to be casualties of that war, and those casualties will be Western companies that have, for whatever reason, stayed in Russia.”

Ukrainian presidential aide dismisses peace conditions laid out by Putin

A Ukrainian presidential aide dismissed a “peace proposal” put forward by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, saying it was not a serious attempt to agree on peace and had no relevance to any negotiations.

Speaking via Zoom, Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters there was “no possibility to find compromise” between Putin’s statement and Ukraine‘s conditions for ending the war launched by Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government didn’t want Russia involved, and the Swiss — aware of Moscow’s reservations about the talks — didn’t invite Russia. The Swiss insist Russia must be involved at some point, and hope it will join the process one day.

Ukrainians too are considering that possibility, Zelensky’s top adviser says.

Putin: ‘Conditions for peace with Ukraine are very simple’

Stating Russia’s terms for peace with Ukraine, Vladimir Putin said: “The conditions are very simple.”

He demanded the full withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the entire territory of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions in eastern and southern Ukraine.

“As soon as they declare in Kyiv that they are ready for such a decision and begin a real withdrawal of troops from these regions, and also officially announce the abandonment of their plans to join NATO - on our side, immediately, literally at the same minute, an order will follow to cease fire and begin negotiations,” he said.

“I repeat, we will do this immediately. Naturally, we will simultaneously guarantee the unhindered and safe withdrawal of Ukrainian units and formations.”

Putin sets out Russian conditions for peace talks with Ukraine

Vladimir Putin on Friday set out what he said were Russia‘s preconditions for starting peace talks with Ukraine.

He said Russia would be ready for such talks “tomorrow” if Ukrainian troops withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk regions and if Ukraine gave up its plans to join NATO.

If Ukraine agreed to those conditions, Putin said Russia would cease fire and start negotiations.

President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the West’s seizure of Russian sovereign assets was theft and would not go unpunished.

Speaking at a meeting with Foreign Ministry officials, Putin said the way the West had treated Moscow showed that any country could fall victim to a similar Western asset freeze.

“Despite all the chicanery, theft will certainly remain theft. And it will not go unpunished”, Putin said.

“Now it is becoming obvious to all countries, companies (and) sovereign funds that their assets and reserves are far from safe in both the legal and economic sense of the word.

“Anyone could be next in line for expropriation by the U.S. and the West.”

Putin was speaking a day after the leaders of the Group of Seven major democracies agreed on an outline deal to provide $50 billion of loans for Ukraine using interest from Russian sovereign assets frozen after Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022 in what it called a special military operation.

Ukrainian military says it downed 7 of 14 Russian missiles

The Ukrainian military said on Friday its forces downed seven of 14 missiles and all 17 drones launched by Russia in overnight attacks in the west of the country.

Russian forces targeted critical infrastructure and military objects during the raid, air force spokesperson Illia Yevlash said on national television.

The Ukrainian military destroyed 11 aerial targets over the western region of Khmelnytskyi, according to the governor. One attack started a fire on infrastructure but no casualties were reported.

Air defence shot down seven of 10 Kh-101/Kh-555 cruise missiles, the Ukrainian military said.

Russia also launched three Iskander-M ballistic missiles, targeting Zaporizhzhia region, and one Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile in its attack, according to Yevlash.

“(Kinzhal) headed for Khmelnytskyi region where it did not reach its target,” he said.

Zaporizhzhia’s governor said a missile struck an open area with no damage nor casualties immediately reported.

The air force also destroyed five drones over the Dnipropetrovsk region, its governor said, with no reports of damage or casualties.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage says Putin is a ‘clever political operator’

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage suggested Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky should enter negotiations with Russia, although he acknowledged Kyiv’s Western allies will continue support to support them.

Mr Farage, challenged about his previous remarks praising Russian president Mr Putin as an operator, told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Yeah, but not as a human being.”

Asked why, Mr Farage replied: “How many years has he been in power? He’s gone from prime minister, to president, he’s a clever political operator. He kills journalists, I don’t like him as a human being in any way at all.

“You can recognise the fact that some people are good at what they do even if they have evil intent.”

Ukraine plans record power imports on Friday, grid operator says

Ukraine plans record power imports on Friday after significant energy infrastructure damage by Russian missile attacks, Ukrainian power grid operator Ukrenergo said.

Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine‘s energy sector have intensified since March, resulting in blackouts in many regions, forcing Kyiv to start large-scale electricity imports from the European Union.

A ministry statement said that the country would import 31,904 megawatt hours (MWh) of power on Friday versus the previous record of 29,796 MWh on Wednesday.

G7 leaders strike deal on $50bn funding for Ukraine using Russian assets

G7 leaders have reached a deal to use profits from frozen Russian assets to provide around $50bn (£39bn) worth of support to Ukraine .

It came after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said he expected “important decisions” from the summit in Italy, with leaders from the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan seeking to shore up support for Kyiv as several of them face elections or political turmoil at home.

Also on Thursday, US President Joe Biden agreed to a sweeping bilateral security agreement that will see his country and Ukraine work together “to help deter and confront future aggression against the territorial integrity” of either state.

Explosion heard in Kyiv region after missile warning

An explosion rang out across the region outside the Ukrainian capital on Friday, a Reuters witness said, following an air raid siren and warnings by the military of a possible Russian missile attack.

“Air defence forces are working in Kyiv region. Stay in your shelters! The missile danger continues,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

It was unclear if the explosion indicated air defences had shot down a target. Public broadcaster Suspilne cited local residents saying they had heard explosions in the western region of Khmelnytskyi.

After the air raid siren sounded, the Air Force said long-range missiles had been fired at Khmelnytskyi region and told Kyiv residents to take cover. The military then declared the air raid alert over, but there was no further official information.

Russian soldiers surrender after Ukrainian counter attack

Dozens of Russian soldiers have appeared to surrender to Ukraine troops after Kyiv launched a counter attack around the city of Vovchansk.

A video released by Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade shows Ukrainian soldiers taking at least 24 Russians as prisoners of war.

South Korea and US sound alarm over North Korea-Russia ties ahead of Putin visit

A possible impending visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to North Korea could deepen military ties between the two countries in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, officials of South Korea and the United States warned on Friday.

South Korea’s vice foreign minister, Kim Hong-kyun, in an emergency phone call with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, said Putin’s visit should not result in more military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow in violation of the resolutions, according to Seoul’s foreign ministry.

Echoing Kim’s concerns, Campbell pledged continued cooperation to tackle potential regional instability and challenges caused by the trip.

“While closely monitoring related developments, the two sides agreed to resolutely respond through airtight cooperation to North Korea’s provocations against South Korea and actions that escalate tensions in the region,” the ministry said in a statement.

On Wednesday, a senior official at Seoul’s presidential office said Putin was expected to visit North Korea “in the coming days”. Russia‘s Vedomosti newspaper on Monday reported Putin would visit North Korea and Vietnam in the coming weeks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday declined to give a date or agenda for a possible visit but said Russia‘s right to develop closer ties with North Korea should not be in doubt or a source of fear for anyone.

Ukraine and Japan sign “breakthrough” $4.5 billion security deal

Ukraine and Japan signed a “breakthrough” security deal worth $4.5 billion on Thursday, Volodymyr Zelensky announced on X.

The Ukrainian president said the agreement includes “security and defense assistance, humanitarian aid, technical and financial cooperation, as well as joint efforts on the Peace Formula”.

He added: “Additionally, the agreement implies sanctions against the aggressor and efforts to hold the aggressor accountable.”

Ex-Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant employee jailed for collaborating with Russia

A former employee of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was sentenced to 10 years in prison for collaborating with Russian forces at the facility, Kyiv Independent reported.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, was captured by Russian troops in March 2022, just days after Moscow launched its Ukraine invasion.

The man was found guilty of collaborating with Russian authorities while holding a senior position, the prosecutor’s office said, adding that a pre-trial investigation was carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine’s (SBU) Zaporizhzhia Oblast office.

The man agreed to be appointed the first deputy general director of the plant and helped organise meetings to persuade colleagues to support Russia’s operations at the plant, the prosecutor’s office said.

Ex-spy says US should be concerned by Russian ships visiting Cuba

An ex-spy has warned that the US should be concerned by Russian ships visiting Cuba , but the Kremlin has insisted that there is nothing to worry about.

Former KGB spy Jack Barsky, who spent a decade spying for the Soviet Union in the US before he was discovered by the FBI, told NewsNation that the US should be “worried” after Russia sent three warships and a nuclear-powered submarine into Cuban waters – just 90 miles from Florida – for routine military exercises.

“You can’t look at this as just a routine exercise. It has to be seen against the background where Putin is stating that he’s actually fighting the West in the Ukraine,” he said.

Martha McHardy reports.

Putin shows off in launch of Russian dummy nuclear warheads

Russian drills to deploy tactical nuclear weapons for combat involved the special delivery of dummy nuclear warheads to forward storage points and an airfield where they were loaded on bombers, according to Russia‘s nuclear unit.

President Vladimir Putin ordered the nuclear drills after what Russia said were threats from the West, including signals from Western officials that they would allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with Western weapons.

Drills have taken place in the south of Russia, which borders Ukraine, and with the involvement of soldiers from the Leningrad military district in Russia‘s northwest, and have included mobile missile launchers, the air force and navy.

Drones strike Russian oil refinery

An oil refinery in Russia’s Voronezh Oblast has been struck by drones overnight, regional Governor Aleksandr Gusev said.

One of the drones hit the oil refinery damaging fuel tanks but caused no deaths, he added.

Russia has reported a rise in Ukrainian attacks on its territory since its forces opened a new front in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region last month.

Russian journalist killed in shelling in Ukraine

Ukrainian shelling killed a Russian journalist covering the 27-month-old war in a village in eastern Ukraine on Thursday.

Valery Kozhin, who worked for Russia’s NTV television channel, was one of a group of journalists hit in the strike, said Ivan Prikhodko, mayor of Horlivka, north of the Russian-held regional centre of Donetsk.

NTV had earlier reported that three of their staff, including Kozhin, had been wounded in the village of Holmivskyi and taken to hospital.

At least 16 journalists have died since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to Reuters.

Two Indians killed fighting for Russian military in Ukraine

Two Indian men recruited by the Russian army have been killed in Ukraine , India’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

India said further recruitment of its nationals by Russia would “not be in consonance” with their bilateral partnership and demanded a “verified stop”.

The ministry urged its citizens to “exercise caution” while seeking employment in Russia amid reports that dozens of Indians had been duped by agents into fighting for the Russian military.

UK imposes first sanctions targeting Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’

Britain has imposed its first sanctions targeting vessels in Russian president Vladimir Putin’s “shadow fleet” that it said was used to circumvent Western sanctions on the trade in Russian oil.

The action, part of 50 new sanctions and co-ordinated with G7 partners, also targeted suppliers of munitions, machine tools, microelectronics, and logistics to Russia’s military, including entities based in China, Israel, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey, the government said.

“Today’s action includes the UK’s first sanctions targeting vessels in Putin’s shadow fleet, used by Russia to circumvent UK and G7 sanctions and continue unfettered trade in Russian oil,” a government statement said.

Britain also sanctioned Russia’s leading financial marketplace, the Moscow Exchange, saying it had obtained a benefit from or supported the Kremlin “by carrying on business in a sector of strategic significance.”

US reporter Evan Gershkovich, jailed in Russia on espionage charges, to stand trial, officials say

U.S. journalist Evan Gershkovich , who has been jailed for over a year in Russia on espionage charges, will stand trial in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg , authorities said Thursday.

An indictment of the Wall Street Journal reporter has been finalized and his case was filed to the Sverdlovsky Regional Court in the city about 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) east of Moscow , according to Russia’s Prosecutor General’s office.

Gershkovich is accused of “gathering secret information” for the CIA about Uralvagonzavod, a facility in the Sverdlovsk region that produces and repairs military equipment, the Prosecutor General’s office said in a statement, revealing for the first time the details of the accusations against him.

G7 leaders strike deal on $50bn funding for Ukraine

G7 leaders have reached a deal to use profits from frozen Russian assets to provide around $50bn (£39bn) worth of support to Ukraine.

Also on Thursday, US president Joe Biden agreed to a sweeping bilateral security agreement that will see his country and Ukraine work together “to help deter and confront future aggression against the territorial integrity” of either state.

Tom Watling has more.