Many politicians, generals and the most eminent professors in the United States publicly admit through clenched teeth that Russia has gone far ahead in the development of hypersonic weapons. And this easily explains why the foreign special services opened the hunt for our “hyper” designs. After all, such a weapon gives the country that possesses it a deafening advantage in a possible war of the 21st century. In much the same way as the nuclear bomb was the main trump card in the twentieth century. And Soviet intelligence officers got atomic secrets in the United States.
Now everything has turned upside down – the Americans (and the Chinese as well) are trying to steal the secret of superfast missiles from us.
And, unfortunately, they managed to “find the keys” to some Russian scientists. At least, such conclusions can be drawn from the FSB reports about the arrests of a number of our specialists in hypersound.
THE MAN FROM “PIANO”
Another such message came the other day. Judging by it, a “big pike” – the general director and chief designer of the “Research Enterprise of Hypersonic Systems” (NIPGS) Alexander Kuranov, got into the network of foreign agents.
On August 12, he was arrested. Russian special services suspect him of the worst crime – treason.
What else is known about him?
Kuranov has been developing hypersonic technologies for many years and has participated in international forums. He is a great specialist in the field of plasma physics and chemistry, the author of 120 scientific papers. Since 1988, he has worked for the Leninets defense holding (which includes NIPGS). And the main task of “Leninets” is “the development and use of new hypersonic technologies as a base for aviation and space technology of the next generation.”
The arrested scientist led research on the development of a new concept for the development of hypersonic speeds of atmospheric flight (the “Ajax” concept, put forward in the 1980s) …
And Kuranov also headed the Leninets directorate in the direction of New hypersonic technologies. And he coordinated the work of scientists from various enterprises of the Russian aerospace complex.
The NIPGS itself, where Kuranov is both the director and general designer, conducts, in the interests of the Ministry of Defense, scientific developments and radio-electronic systems, and drones, and aviation gas turbines, and jet engines, and airframes, including hypersonic ones … It is absolutely clear that Kuranov “sat in a hypersonic piano” and was eminently aware of all its keys and strings.
For several years he was also the organizer of the Russian-American symposium “Thermochemical and Plasma Processes in Aerodynamics”, participated in international associations.
“WORKED BY ORDERS FROM MANY COUNTRIES”
Of course, all this dry (similar to a formal resume) information does not reveal the most important thing – where, when, how and what kind of secrets our scientist could give out to foreigners, which draws on that very cool article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
I personally burn with curiosity. Well, isn't it interesting to know what kind of intelligence Kuranov could work for? What drawings, diagrams, documents could you transfer and how much “dough” did you get for it?
And what does the phrase on the website of one of the scientific firms where Kuranov worked, “worked on orders from many countries of the world” mean? And what, this did not alert anyone?
Yes, and I want to know about something else: what could have prompted a scientist to commit a terrible crime?
Of course, I understand that I am asking naive questions, because everything is covered with a thick layer of the strictest secrecy! And the question may arise: “For what purpose are you interested, citizen?”
Well, we will have to wait for the trial (and it will also be closed) and the text of the verdict “for the public” – with smooth and essentially meaningless words.
Mysterious “AJAX”
In the meantime, scientist Kuranov, on the bunk of a high-ranking prison in the status of a suspect, reflects on the wording of the reason for his arrest – “transferring information about scientific developments constituting a state secret to a citizen of a foreign state”, rumors (assumptions!) Have already spread that he could have revealed the secrets of a hypersonic aircraft Ajax. Work on it began in Soviet times and continued until the 2000s.
However, the Ajax concept was put forward in the late 1980s not by Kuranov, but by Vladimir Freistadt, who works at the same NIPGS. He suggested not to protect the apparatus flying at great speed from extremely high temperatures, but, on the contrary, to let them in to increase the energy resource. This solved the most difficult problem – cooling the airframe. It could not be solved by those countries that “in parallel” with the USSR (and then Russia) were engaged in hypersound.
In the 90s, together with like-minded people, Kuranov was looking for sources of funding for his project. This also surfaced: in May 2001, “Leninist” signed an agreement with the Chinese side on the joint development of an apparatus from the “Ajax” concept. The project was designed for 10-15 years and was estimated by experts at $ 70-80 million. It’s strange: why then did the special services not slow down the deal?
“GOLDEN HEADS” ON THE BEDS
In recent years, several criminal cases have been initiated in Russia at once against scientists who worked with hypersound.
In 2018, TsNIIMash employee Viktor Kudryavtsev was arrested in Moscow on charges of treason. The reason was the leakage of data on secret hypersonic defense projects.
In 2019, another employee of TsNIIMash, Deputy Head of the Department of Spacecraft Roman Kovalev, was also arrested on charges of treason.
Valery Golubkin, a professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI), was arrested with the same wording in 2020. In the circle of his scientific interests
included hypersonic flow around aircraft.
In the same year, another TsAGI employee, Anatoly Gubanov, was arrested – he also worked with hypersound. And he also became a suspect in the transfer of secret technologies to foreign special services.
OPINIONS
Vladislav Shurygin, military expert:
THIS IS NOT DRUNK TO RUN
– The matter of the investigation is to establish whether in this case there was an attempt to treason or it was a mistake, an oversight. The article on treason itself is very difficult. Five years ago it was “narrowed”, now it is impossible to put a person in jail, who, for example, accidentally blabbed something to someone due to drunkenness. The fact of contact with foreign special services and the deliberate transfer of data must be clearly established. So they are now being presented with treason, trying to have very serious evidence on hand.
But all the main works on hypersound are closed under the stamp of special secrecy. Nothing, except what was previously published in open sources, is nowhere to be found on this topic. Therefore, even an accidental transfer of information is already a disclosure of state secrets. This is very serious.
And yet another arrest of a hypersound specialist shows that it is critically important for foreign countries to gain access to Russian developments.
Konstantin Sivkov, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences:
MAYBE IT'S BUSINESS IN CHINA?
– I suppose that the scientist could transfer some materials to China outside the framework of the cooperation agreement. If Kuranov had acted strictly within the limits of the agreement, then there would have been no grounds for arrest.
Evgeny Smirnov, attorney:
STEPS OF ELDERLY SCIENTISTS
– There is a series of cases when elderly scientists are accused of treason. And all these cases are similar to each other. I think that in this case, too, the accusation may be that the scientist included some allegedly state secret information in the presentation with which he went to an international conference, or in the report that he sent to colleagues as part of his work. In all such cases of scientists in which I participated, I have not seen treason anywhere.
Oleg Smolin, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Education and Science:
OFFICIALS REQUIRE PRINTING
– The problem is that scientists often do not realize that they are divulging secrets. The Ministry of Science requires that they be published abroad. That is why, inadvertently, materials of dual use are included in foreign journals. And scientists, without knowing it, turn out to be treason.
Alexey Leonkov, military expert:
UNDER THE SIGN OF “CITIZENS”
– Americans are not given hypersound. They do not have their own technology of controlled hypersonic flight in the atmosphere. All their tests have failed so far. Therefore, they conduct espionage, try to recruit. In addition, there is a hypersonic direction in civil aviation. There are several projects of supersonic passenger aircraft in the world. But they do not arise just like that, but to collect information under the guise of exchanging civic experience in a completely legal setting. Look at the site of this NIIPGS, they regularly participated in international forums. Somewhere there our specialist and could be recruited.
FOREIGN INTEREST
You can’t even imagine how the US White House and the Pentagon are downright “furious” from the fact that Russia has gone far ahead in the development of hypersonic weapons.
Of course! Great America, with 40% of Nobel laureates, and a military budget that exceeds the costs of the army of the rest of the world combined ($ 750 billion), cannot catch up with Russia in hypersound. Charles Richard, Admiral, Chief of the Strategic Command (STRATCOM) of the U.S. Armed Forces plucked up his courage and honestly said:
– Russia is currently the leading country in the field of hypersonic technologies.
And a couple of years ago, US President Donald Trump stamped his feet, splashed saliva and let lightning bolts at his professors, generals and scouts, in Khrushchev's way demanding to “catch up and overtake” the enemy.
Once, in order to reassure Trump, one of the designers told him that there was success. And Donald stunned the world with a sensation: the United States created a “super-duper rocket” that flies at a speed of Mach 17 (more than 20 thousand kilometers per hour!).
But it soon became clear: nonsense. The rocket reached this speed only for a couple of seconds, and then … exploded.
At this time, sad news flew from Moscow to Washington: Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov, who oversees the defense industry, said that our hypersonic missile showed a steady speed of Mach 27 during tests!
US space intelligence has confirmed this fact.
Here the Americans, as they say: “pressed the gas pedal to failure” – tripled the number of their tests.
But there is still no success. The rockets continue to explode and flop every other time.
And Russia has already adopted such missiles for service!
WE CAN'T DO – WE WILL BUY OR STEAL
So the US Audit Office has released a report called Hypersonic Weapons, which admits that the creation of American “super-fast missiles” faces many challenges. Chief among them is the lack of “essential technologies.” And Russia has overtaken the United States by a whole circle and is already entering the second …
What problems are the Americans unable to solve? Yes, a whole bunch! Improve the design of a ramjet engine; select materials that can withstand temperatures of 3 thousand degrees; protect the control system from combustion; create effective rocket fuel.
And so, in order to catch up with the Russians, the Americans are betting on espionage. To put it simply, on stealing the secrets of hypersound from the Russians.
The number of US agents working only to extract such secrets has doubled in Russia in recent years. Their motto is that you can not find out and steal, you can buy.
They are selected to our hypersonic secrets in different ways – total wiretapping around our institutes and design bureaus, inviting our “hypersonic” scientists to seminars, frenzied fees for publications in magazines …
And they are persistently looking for approaches to those who can be “hooked”. And, judging by the number of cases of “hypersonic” treason in recent years, they succeed?
