Avangard (kendaraan layang hipersonik)

Avangard (Bahasa Rusia: Авангард; Bahasa Inggris: Vanguard), sebelumnya dikenal sebagai Objekt 4202, Yu-71 dan Yu-74, adalah kendaraan layang hipersonik atau hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) Rusia, yang dapat dibawa sebagai muatan MIRV pada ICBM berat seperti UR-100UTTKh, R-36M2 dan RS-28 Sarmat. Mereka dapat mengirimkan muatan nuklir dan konvensional.

Peluncuran ICBM UR-100UTTKh, Bermuatan Avangard HGV, Dombarovsky Air Base, 26 Desember 2018

Avangard adalah satu dari enam senjata strategis baru Rusia yang diresmikan Presiden Rusia Vladimir Putin pada 1 Maret 2018.

Operator

Rusia

Bacaan

• Andrew Cockburn, "Like a Ball of Fire: Andrew Cockburn on hypersonic weaponry", London Review of Books, vol. 42, no. 5 (5 March 2020), pp. 31–32. "'Welcome to the world of strategic analysis, where we program weapons that don't work to meet threats that don't exist.' This was what Ivan Selin, a senior Pentagon official, used to tell subordinates in the Defence Department in the 1960s." (p. 31.) Cockburn recounts impracticable-weapons projects, including Russia's Avangard "hypersonic glide missile", Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" project, the US's 1951 nuclear-powered-bomber project, and the US's 1950s Dyna-Soar "boost-glide"-weapon project suggested by Walter Dornberger, a favorite of Hitler's who had overseen the V2 rocket program. "[T]he US and Russia have both taken Selin's axiom a step further: they mean to deploy a weapon that doesn't work against a threat that doesn't exist that was in turn developed to counter an equally non-existent threat." (p. 32.)