The TASS wire, posted yesterday, begins bluntly. “The treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) has ceased to meet both the interests of Moscow and Washington.” TASS then cites Alexander Mikhailov, the head of Russia’s Bureau for Military-Political Analysis, who proposes that what will replace New START is a new arms control regime, one that addresses hypersonic delivery vehicles. Necessarily, this treaty will go beyond bilateral treaties of the past.
“"The Americans are now testing their own hypersonic vehicles, and, most likely, at the end of 2023 or already in 2024, their first hypersonic product will go live,” Mikhailov noted. “Immediately after that, hypersonic parity will emerge between Russia and the United States, although, of course, this is a rather tricky question - we will have more of these weapons, and they will have have less - but as soon as they have such missiles in service, both sides will possess hypersonic weapons. China will have them, too. It has already conducted some successful tests.”
He stressed that, right now, a situation is beginning to take shape in which “all three nuclear hegemons” will have hypersonic delivery vehicles. “Perhaps after that a platform will emerge for negotiating another strategic arms treaty for the three signatories. However, if an agreement with the Chinese and Americans is signed, India will have to be brought into the next agreement in five to ten years. The same applies to Pakistan, possibly Israel, and so on,” he pointed out. “Frankly speaking, the existing Treaty is no longer beneficial either to us or to the US, given the current realities.”
