Russia Unveils Sophisticated Weapon That Can Penetrate US Missile Defenses

Schematics of the new Russian katapalta | Angeleses, Pixabay

MOSCOW, RUSSIA–Speaking during the annual state-of-the-nation address in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin bragged about a new weapons system that is capable of piercing US missile defenses.*

US experts described the development as a coup of sorts for Russia–though not the kind they fervently hoped for. With the announcement, it’s clear that mutually assured destruction still applies between America and Russia.
For years, the US had been attempting to build up its missile defenses so that it could confidently use nukes against Russia or China and be protected from the inevitable nuclear retaliation. If successful, the initiative could change a nuclear first strike from a mass murder-suicide into merely mass muder, which foreign policy experts tend to be much more comfortable with.

However, Russia’s new declaration suggests that, at least for now, the US missile defense program has come to naught.

Russia’s new weapon is known as a catapult-and-rock system (katapulta, in Russian)–which is capable of hurling large inorganic compounds at the US. Although the underlying technology is not terribly new, experts say it will be able to get through US defenses, mostly because US missile defenses can’t reliably hit much of anything.

After Putin’s remarks, several US politicians proposed to increase defense spending in order to address the Catapult Gap. The US’s own catapult technologies are thought to be at least decades behind Russia’s, an unfortunate legacy of being founded after the glory days of castles.



*This is a satirical post.