
Putin says Russian Navy to get hypersonic nuclear strike weapons - rch
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-navy-day-parade-putin-idUSKCN24R0CJ
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perl4ever
Nuclear missiles are normally hypersonic, so it seems like the difference is
that these are cruise missiles and not ballistic missiles?

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dragonwriter
> Nuclear missiles are normally hypersonic,

Ballistic missiles usually are, cruise missiles usually are not; both can be
nuclear (or not).

> so it seems like the difference is that these are cruise missiles and not
> ballistic missiles?

The combination of nuclear, hypersonic, and cruise is what is significant,
yes.

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alecmg
Add to combination use of atmospheric oxygen to make it really significant and
a technological breakthrough.

Its relatively easy to build a rocket carrying both fuel and oxygen and make
it go hypersonic. Using oxidiser from air gives it unique range and
maneuverability capabilities.

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zalkota
Cool? They’ll never use them

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NotSammyHagar
We hope. To me the worry is less time to consider false notices of attacks.
Any attack will be met by devastating counter attacks so there should never be
a consideration that any notice is a real attack. There are many almost
launches where there was false notice (the moon reflects radar, etc).

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sgillen
Definitely, I worry about this a lot. I do wonder about some of the close call
stories that are out there. It seems like in its in Russia’s best interest to
project an image that they are willing to launch without hesitation. So I
wonder if any of the stories of “two officers wanted to launch and only the
third saved us all” stories are propaganda.

I don’t have any evidence of this, and I definitely don’t want to play down
the risk of nuclear war.

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christefano
Had to look up “hypersonic,” so consider this back of the envelope math from
an interested amateur.

Hypersonic is the term used for speeds over Mach 5. Mach 1 is equal to the
speed of sound, however the speed of sound varies at different elevation.

Sound travels slower in mediums that are less dense, so the higher you go in
elevation the slower Mach is.

Mach 5 is about 6,125km/h (3,805.9mph) at sea level, and about 5,339 km/h
(3,317.5mph) at 35,000ft, which makes is where you’ll see lots of commercial
airliners.

Source: [https://www.quora.com/How-fast-is-
mach-5-speed?share=1](https://www.quora.com/How-fast-is-mach-5-speed?share=1)

