ASTANA, May 23. /ITAR-TASS/. The Tactical Missiles Corporation plans to develop the first model of a hypersonic missile by 2020, the corporation's director-general Boris Obnosov said at the Kadex 2014 exhibition of weapons and military equipment in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Russia had completed developing a program to create hypersonic missile technologies. The Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Industry and Trade had already approved the program, Obnosov said.

Twelve working groups were formed with the participation of dozens of institutes and companies. The program was already developed and approved. The main thing was to implement it, he said.

The United States and leading companies in other countries are intensively working on such a missile. India, China and France also try to develop in this direction, he noted. "If we are weak here, if we are behind, it will be hard to catch up with them later. Purposeful, systematic and everyday work is needed," the director-general noted.

"If somebody thinks that tomorrow we will pull a hypersonic missile from a pocket, he is mistaken, since the process requires serious scientific and technical developments, serious tests, personnel training and many other things," Obnosov said.