Launching a scathing attack on Russia, US President Donald Trump has accused Moscow of stealing hypersonic missile design during Barack Obama’s administration. The accusation evokes memories of the Cold War when the erstwhile Soviet Union stole the Sidewinder missile design.
“Russia stole the design, they got it from us,” Donald Trump recently said in an interview with Fox News, alleging that “some bad person gave them the design.” In the same interaction, he expressed optimism that the US would have super hypersonic missiles, which would be even better. “We’ll have them starting fairly shortly,” he added.
These allegations reiterate the same claim the US President has been making for several years. In 2020, he made these claims at an election campaign rally in Minnesota without presenting any compelling evidence to back the charge. He reiterated the claim in 2023 when he told supporters that Russia had stolen plans for what he referred to as “super-duper missiles.”
The Kremlin dismissed the allegations at the time. Responding to Trump’s comments, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia has its missile and an excellent one. “It’s hard for me to say whether our missile fits in well with Mr. Trump’s term ‘super-duper,’ but it is a good missile that has no rivals in the world for now. And there is not just one.”
A missile is deemed “hypersonic” if it can travel at a speed faster than five times the speed of sound while maintaining “significant maneuverability.”
Basically, anything that reaches five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5, is considered hypersonic. This is roughly equivalent to a mile per second or little more than 100 kilometers per minute. Hypersonic missiles are extremely difficult to intercept due to their high speed and unpredictable trajectory.
Russia has a few hypersonic missiles: Kinzhal, Tsirkon (or Zircon), Avangard and Oreshnik. Of these, Kinzhal, Tsirkon, and Oreshnik have already made their combat debut in the ongoing Ukraine War. In contrast, the United States is still merely playing catch up in the ongoing hypersonic race.
In December, the US Army, in collaboration with the US Navy, achieved a major milestone with the successful test-fire of its Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), also known as Dark Eagle.
The feat was achieved after two years of testing and multiple setbacks. On the other hand, the US Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) is still under development and remains marred by delays, while the air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, commonly referred to as ARRW, was abandoned after a series of test failures.
The US has yet to field an operational hypersonic weapon. Russian commentators have used this to mock Donald Trump’s claims. Russian military expert Alexander Mikhailov earlier told Sputnik: “If Russia had stolen the drawings of a ‘super-duper’ US missile during Obama’s presidency, then a question arises: what prevented Americans from making hypersonic weapons with the help of the same drawings long time ago?”
Earlier, during the peak of the Cold War, the Soviet Union managed to steal/get access to ‘cutting edge’ AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles.
When The USSR Stole Sidewinder Missile
Introduced in the 1950s, the AIM-9 Sidewinder is one of the most widely used missiles in the Western world and the first heat-seeking missile in history. However, the Soviet Union managed to get its hands on the missile two times.
During the Second Taiwan Crisis of 1958, the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) fought a series of fierce battles with the Taiwanese Air Force, which was supported by the United States at the time.
As part of a highly secret mission called Operation Black Magic, the US Navy modified some Taiwanese F-86 Sabre fighters to carry the AIM-9B Sidewinder missile, which was first used during aerial combat on September 24, 1958. The Taiwan Air Force registered several combat victories using the missile, including nine “confirmed” and two “probable” kills.
However, the victory came at a massive cost for the United States. One of these heat-seeking missiles hit its target but failed to detonate. The missile was later discovered lodged within a PLAAF MiG-17F’s fuselage. The Chinese had discovered a gold mine.
After removing this Sidewinder and disassembling it, the Chinese engineers hurried it to the Soviets, who had not yet seen something as compact and sophisticated as the technology used in the gyroscope of the AIM-9.
Soviet engineer Gennadiy Sokolovskiy later recounted, “The Sidewinder missile was to us a university offering a course in missile construction technology which has upgraded our engineering education and updated our approach to the production of future missiles.”
The Soviets created their own version of this lethal missile—the K-13—by copying the Sidewinder’s infrared tracking, in-flight steering, and stability systems.
The K-13 was put into service just two years later, in 1960. After that, the Soviets manufactured the R-3 missile, which was also based on the Sidewinder, which they then started selling to the countries of the Warsaw Pact.
During that time, the US upgraded the Sidewinder missile to make it more lethal. However, the Soviets could not match up the efforts to upgrade their reverse-engineered iteration of Sidewinder.
A few years later, the Soviets were informed by their allies in the Middle East that the R-3S missiles were quickly becoming obsolete in aerial combat against forces having US missiles.
What followed was a shocking Soviet heist.
On October 22, 1967, German architect and KGB spy Manfred Ramminger, his Polish driver Josef Linowski, and German F-104 Starfighter pilot Wolf-Diethard Knoppe stole an operational AIM-9 missile from the Neuburg Air Base in what was then West Germany.
The KGB spy managed to break into Neuburg Air Base covertly in the dark by taking advantage of negligent guards and dense fog. He swiftly put an operable AIM-9 missile from the nearby ammunition stockpile onto a wheelbarrow and moved it down the entire runway to his Mercedes-Benz, which was parked outside the base.
Surprisingly, he got away without any trouble. Once home, he dismantled the Sidewinder, packed the parts into a box, and sent it off to Moscow.
Soviet technicians once again reverse-engineered the enhanced Sidewinder model. In 1974, the Soviets unveiled the R-13M missile, an upgraded variant that was believed to be nearly identical to the AIM-9E.
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