THE Pentagon scrambled to launch a rocket to run hypersonic weapon experiments just hours after Russia staged nuke drills.
Vladimir Putin oversaw the land, sea and air exercises which,according to a Russian colonel, were to practice obliterating Britain and the US.
Shortly after the deranged tyrant unleashed a barrage of missiles, the US Navy and Army blasted off a sounding rocket from a seaside NASA base to test almost a dozen hypersonic weapon experiments.
According to the Pentagon, the test on Wednesday from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia was "successful" and was aimed at helping develop the hypersonic class of weapons.
Sandia National Laboratories ran the test to evaluate hypersonic weapon communications and navigation equipment as well as advanced materials that can withstand the heat in a "realistic hypersonic environment," according to the US Navy.
Hypersonic glide vehicles are launched from a rocket in the upper atmosphere before gliding to a target at speeds of more than five times the speed of sound, or about 6,200 km per hour.
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The US, Russia and China have quickened their pace to build hypersonic weapons – the next generation of arms that rob adversaries of reaction time and traditional defeat mechanisms.
In a bid to speed up the development, the Pentagon launched the prototypes using a sounding rocket, a smaller and more affordable test vehicle.
Wednesday's test was intended to validate future aspects of the Navy's Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) and the Army's Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW).
Glide bodies are different from their air-breathing hypersonic weapon cousins, which use scramjet engine technology and the vehicle's high speed to forcibly compress incoming air before combustion to enable sustained flight at hypersonic speeds.
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It comes after Putin rehearsed wiping Britain and the US off the map in chilling World War 3 drills, according to Colonel Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of Russia’s National Defence magazine.
He said the UK would be "swallowed up" by the Atlantic Ocean, while in place of the US would be a "sea strait named after Comrade Stalin".
Korotchenko told Russian state TV this was the purpose of the “strategic training exercise”, known as "Operation Thunder", amid boiling tensions over the Ukraine war unleashed by Putin.
He said: "The tests were practicing a massive nuclear missile strike in response to a first nuclear attack against Russia.
“Who could launch a first nuclear strike on Russia? The US and the UK.”
Video released by the Russian-military run Zvezda website of Wednesday's drills showed armed forces personnel in front of computers launching a Yars ballistic missile.
Other footage showed a Sineva intercontinental ballistic missile being fired from a submarine in the Barents Sea and a TU-95 bomber that launched cruise missiles.
The Kremlin said that all tasks set for the exercise were fulfilled and all the missiles that were test-fired reached their designated targets.
Putin observed the annual exercise remotely as Russia rehearsed its response to a nuclear attack.
It comes after a US official warned of "troubling developments" involving Russia's nuclear arsenal.
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Fears are growing that Putin, 70, could detonate a nuke as Moscow continues to wildly swing its nuclear sabre.
The tyrant is becoming increasingly frustrated as his troops have been hit with a series of disastrous defeats across the frontline in Ukraine.
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