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FROM EIR DAILY ALERT


U.S. Strategic Command Head Hyten: Take Seriously New Weapons That Putin Unveiled

April 20, 2018 (EIRNS)—Speaking to reporters on April 17 at a space symposium in Colorado Springs, U.S. Strategic Command commander Gen. John Hyten stated:

“You should believe Vladimir Putin about everything he said he’s working on. Now, the operational status of a lot of those capabilities—that’s a different issue. But everything that he’s said, I know that Russia’s working on, and we watch them very closely. We also listen to what they say very closely, and none of what he did and none of what he said surprised me.”

General Hyten’s remarks, reported in Military Times, refer to Putin’s March 1 televised Address to the Federal Assembly in which he revealed new weapons systems, some based on new physical principles, and which redefined the strategic situation globally. Putin’s announcement in fact meant that the U.S. had been fundamentally “Sputnik-ed,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche commented at the time. General Hyten’s comments are among the first known explicit public responses from the American side to those developments, and reflect a recognition of that new reality.

According to Military Times, General Hyten would not say whether the United States has seen evidence of Russia’s “invincible” hypersonic missile, but, he said, the U.S. military has observed both Russia and China operating hypersonic missiles of varied capabilities.

“I won’t give you any specifics about the means we use to watch that. I won’t give you any of the technical specifics about the capabilities of those missiles. But I can tell you that we have observed both Russia and China testing hypersonic capabilities.”

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