WASHINGTON, March 10. /TASS/. The United States does not have in service and is not working on the creation of hypersonic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads identical to those operational in Russia, a leading US military intelligence researcher, Paul Freisthler, said at a hearing in the strategic arms subcommittee of the US House of Representatives.

The Russian Avangard system is the world's only deployed hypersonic strategic system, he said.

To an elaborative question of one of the committee’s members, whether this meant that the United States neither had in service nor planned to create similar hypersonic strategic systems, none of the participants in the hearings provided an answer. At the same time, Michael Horowitz, the director of the Emerging Capabilities Policy Office at the US Department of Defense, explained that the issue of creating hypersonic strategic weapons was a political issue, while defense-related agencies were focused on their specific tasks.

Work is in progress on creating hypersonic systems for regional purposes, which are believed to be capable of coping with strategic tasks, he said.

Michael White, the assistant director for hypersonics at the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, admitted that no country in the world, according to US estimates, currently had the ability to protect itself against hypersonic weapons. The laws of physics are the same for everyone, and the United States and Russia face the same challenges in this area, he said.