The expansion of the American missile defense system in Europe ultimately gave Russia a serious advantage in the field of hypersonic weapons. American military expert Jack Buckby came to this conclusion in an article for National Security Journal.

Buckby recalled that in 2018 Vladimir Putin announced the creation of new Russian weapons capable of overcoming Western missile defense systems. In the expert’s assessment, this was caused by the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and the subsequent deployment of American missile defense elements in Europe.

Now, as Buckby noted, Russia has hypersonic systems for which the United States still has no direct analogues. Among them, he named the Avangard system, the Kinzhal missile and the Zircon sea-launched missile.

The expert paid special attention to Avangard, which entered combat duty at the end of 2019. According to him, this system is a hypersonic glide vehicle mounted on an intercontinental ballistic missile.

After launch, the vehicle separates from the missile and continues moving through the atmosphere at extremely high speed, changing both direction and altitude. Buckby noted that Avangard can reach speeds of more than Mach 20, making it an extremely difficult target for modern missile defense systems.

In the expert’s opinion, the significance of Avangard goes beyond purely military characteristics. The existence of such a system allows Moscow to demonstrate that attempts to weaken Russia’s nuclear potential through missile defense expansion do not produce results.

Buckby believes that Avangard remains both a military and political instrument of deterrence.