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Sirens howled.

A voice issued an urgent warning from loudspeakers: “Air attack, air attack.

Looking for cover, looking for cover. ”This is not a scene from a war film or a crisis area, and not long ago either.

In fact, it happened only recently, on December 12th in Germany.

In the vicinity of Kaiserslautern, at the US Air Force Base Ramstein, soldiers and employees stationed there were terrified.

In the announcements, the otherwise reassuring addition: “This is an exercise.” So the emergency shortly before Christmas?

The alarm was triggered in Ramstein because a Russian submarine fired four ICBMs a few seconds apart.

Started in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk, north of Japan, they flew towards Europe.

After 5500 kilometers, the missile tips with dummy nuclear weapons finally landed in a sparsely populated region of northwestern Russia.

The test character was probably not clear to the US military.

To the relief of the worried soldiers, the all-clear came a few minutes after the attack message.

The US soldiers' platform "Stars and Stripes" then reported a false alarm in Ramstein.

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The incident shows that the US is not ruling out a missile attack on Europe and that alarm systems are constantly alert.

The military are now facing a fundamentally new type of threat.

With the use of so-called hypersonic weapons, previous warning chains and defense measures could be thwarted and response times could be dramatically reduced.

It's a nightmare for those in charge of the armed forces and politics.

For the armaments industry, however, also the hope of new billion-dollar orders.

It is the next stage in the spiral of attack threat and defense.

Dangerous mix of surprise, unpredictability and helplessness

The specialty of the new type of weapon is that the hypersonic glider drones and cruise missiles launched from the ground, submarines or the air are not only extremely fast, but also maneuverable.

They are difficult to grasp, and their tortuous trajectories make it difficult to predict their intended destination.

Combating them is extremely difficult.

A dangerous mix of surprise, unpredictability and helplessness.

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Above all, it takes less time to decide whether and how to react.

While the lead time for an attack by Russia on the USA with ballistic missiles is calculated at 20 to 30 minutes, the time window for hypersonic weapons is shortened to five minutes and less, experts say.

The hypersonic weapons category includes missiles that travel at at least five and up to twenty times the speed of sound.

Ballistic missiles also reach this speed.

However, their trajectory is largely predictable.

The new hypersonic weapons, on the other hand, can snake their way to the target or hop on layers of the earth's atmosphere - just like a flat stone, thrown at sufficient speed, jumps over water.

To do this, the missiles are lifted up with a rocket.

Decoupled there, they slide on the upper atmospheric layers to their destination.

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The new type of weapon could endanger the delicate balance between the major nuclear powers, according to the Berlin think tank DGAP (German Society for Foreign Policy).

Disarmament negotiations could also be torpedoed.

There is no control over the new weapon type.

The ICBMs fired by the Russian submarine that set off the false alarm in Ramstein were of the conventional Bulava type.

The missile was not armed with the new hypersonic weapons that Russian President Vladimir Putin raved about when he spoke of successful tests of his hypersonic glider Awangard in December 2018.

It is the "absolute weapon", said Putin - because from his point of view there are no defense options.

Two years after Putin's message about hypersonic weapons, the Awangard glide missiles are now operational with nuclear warheads, US military recently warned.

Just one day before the Ramstein false alarm, the Russian military also tested their new Hypersonic guided missile SS-N-33 Zirkon, which was fired from a modern frigate in the White Sea on the edge of the Arctic Ocean.

Not a reassuring scenario from a western point of view.

Experts see Russia, but also China, with a gliding vehicle in a leading role in hypersonic weapons.

The US is doing everything it can to catch up on an initial deficit.

Above all, the largest US armaments company Lockheed Martin is driving the development forward and recently flew a test mission with a Hypersonic model (AGM-183A) under the wings of a B-52 bomber.

Lockheed has just announced the purchase of the rocket manufacturer Aerojet Rocketdyne for $ 4.4 billion with a view to the new weapons technology.

The USA and France are also working on hypersonic weapons

While Russia and China are working on hypersonic gliding vehicles and cruise missiles, the US is taking a broad approach and is also working on hypersonic aircraft that could be used in decades.

Instead of rocket propulsion, they should operate in the air with so-called ramjet engines (scram jets).

The big challenges with this type of weapon are the enormous temperatures and the control when flying through layers of air at extreme speeds.

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In addition to the USA, Russia and China, France is also currently working on a hypersonic glide body.

Europe's guided weapons company MBDA, in which Airbus is also involved, is driving a European five-nation project (Twister).

By 2030, the system should not only be able to detect hypersonic weapons as early as possible, but also fight the missiles.

Under the leadership of France, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain are involved in the project.

For US arms companies such as Lockheed Martin or Raytheon, the new branch of arms opens up new business.

The Pentagon plans to spend $ 3.2 billion just on Hypersonic developments in 2021.

There is still no concrete procurement, while in Russia these weapons are supposedly already operational.

In any case, the US takes the new threat very seriously.

The armed forces are also concerned about their bases outside the United States.

In Europe, this includes Ramstein in particular, where the sirens recently accidentally warned of an air strike.

A US Air Force tender for $ 925 million to protect facilities in Europe against drone attacks has now been announced.

The scenario is based on attacks from China and Russia.

The defense system should be able to repel 15 drone attacks in the first hour.

Russian President Putin is said not to be worried even if the US also has Hypersonic weapons ready for action.

The most modern new Russian surface-to-air missile system S-500 and a modernized interceptor missile would be a possible “antidote”, Putin said recently at his annual press conference.

Russia has a lead in technology.

He said nothing on the subject of false positives or accidentally assumed attack scenarios.