President Donald Trump recently asserted that Russia had stolen plans for an American hypersonic missile Trump called the “super-duper” during the administration of President Barack Obama, and that these stolen plans served as the basis of Russia’s current arsenal of advanced hypersonic weapons. Trump’s allegation repeats a claim he first made on the campaign trail in October 2023. It is likely that Trump is referring to information derived from a counterintelligence briefing he received during his first term in office.

The notion that Russian hypersonic weapons are derived from American research and development is facially absurd.

In fact, it appears that the opposite is the case—that the United States has acquired research from Russian hypersonic weapons programs and incorporated it into American weapons systems.

Russia’s most advanced hypersonic weapon is the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle. It is derived from research and development programs dating back to Soviet times, but which were halted after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War due to a lack of funding and changing geopolitical realities.

Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia resumed development of hypersonic capabilities in the aftermath of the withdrawal by the United States from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. Initial work is believed to have begun around 2005.

However, Russia held off from fully funding this effort in hopes that it might be able to re-inject ABM issues into the US-Russian strategic dialogue that was taking place in the aftermath of the US-Russian “reset” that took place early on during the first term of the Obama administration. When, in the aftermath of the signing and ratification of the New START treaty in 2010, it became clear that the Obama administration had no intention of meaningfully engaging on issues pertaining to missile defense, Russia made the decision to move forward with the development of hypersonic capabilities in order to deploy weapons capable of defeating all known and projected US ABM capabilities.

One of the problems Russia faced regarding this research is that scientists who were engaged in the Soviet-era hypersonic programs which had been mothballed after the collapse of the Soviet Union were being sought out by foreign intelligence services who were seeking to gain access to the results of this research to further their own respective hypersonic missile weapons.

One such example was a program ostensibly managed by the von Karman Institute for Thermodynamics (VKI) known as FPV-7 Space, which collaborated with six Russian research institutes, including several involved in both past Soviet hypersonic research and ongoing research and development into contemporary hypersonic glide vehicles such as the Avangard, which at that time was known as Project 4202.
VKI is registered in Belgium as a non-governmental organization, and is closely associated with NATO’s Advisory Group for Aerospace and Development (AGARD) and the Defense Research Group (DRG).

The US intelligence community’s science and technology component maintains connectivity with VKI through its NATO affiliation.
It is highly likely that the US intelligence community used the FPV-7 Space program to gain access to Russian scientists involved in past and current hypersonic research, and guided the interaction between VKI and these scientists to gain access to data relevant to Russia’s ongoing research and development work regarding Avangard and other hypersonic weapons.

Several Russian scientists involved in the FPV-7 Space program have been arrested by Russian law enforcement and charged with providing state secrets to foreign intelligence organizations.
In their defense, lawyers for these scientists state that all information provided by these scientists, in the form of lectures and professional papers, had been cleared by Russian authorities for release to foreigners.

However, it appears that the Russian security services may have gained access to US hypersonic plans not for the purpose of stealing and using information contained within to develop Russian weapons, but rather to ascertain the extent to which data unique to Russian hypersonic weapons research programs the detained Russian scientists had access to had found its way into US hypersonic weapons development programs. Given the successful prosecution of the Russian scientists involved in the FPV-7 Space project run by VKI, it appears that the scientists, witting or unwitting, provided information above and beyond that which had been cleared to be released.

Moreover, the arrest and prosecution of these scientists indicates that rather than the “theft” of US hypersonic plans being a case of Russian reliance upon US research to further its hypersonic weapons capabilities, the opposite is true—it is the US which used its intelligence services to gain access to secret Russian information to further its own weapons research and development.

Vir: Scott Ritter via X