What are hypersonic weapons and is Russia's use of them in Ukraine the start of a new arms race?

In 2019, a new type of hypersonic weapon called the DF-17 was unveiled during a military parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Now, just under three years later, the Russian Ministry of Defence has claimed the first combat use of one of these missiles in its ongoing war in Ukraine, specifically an air-launched Kinzhal hypersonic weapon.

In a way, the label "hypersonic" could be considered misleading for these new kinds of arms systems because it is not necessarily the hypersonic speed at which they travel that constitutes a significant development.

Rather, what distinguishes these new kinds of weapons is their ability to change trajectory after they’ve been launched and their capability to evade radar detection by flying low in the atmosphere, in addition to travelling at hypersonic Mach 5 speeds.

“Their trajectory and their path is much more difficult to predict, especially if they're manoeuvrable," Dr Chris Combs, a Dee Howard endowed assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told Euronews Next.

"So that is very concerning for a lot of world leaders because it will significantly decrease response time if one of these weapons is fired, which can create a lot of instability and put people into positions where they have to make a very hard decision, very fast".

Why would Russia use hypersonic missiles in Ukraine?

The targets of the Russian strikes were an underground weapons storage unit in western Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk region on March 18 and another against a fuel storage site in central Ukraine in the Mykolayiv region on March 19.

While US and Ukrainian officials have not confirmed that it was a hypersonic missile strike, they have confirmed that