If you define "hypersonic weapon" as merely traveling at or beyond Mach 5, then practically every medium range ballistic missile since the V-2 qualifies. There is nothing special about a missile that can hit hypersonic speeds.
The real difference is maneuvering, but most of Russia's "hypersonic weapons" cannot actually do this. Hence why Ukraine has shot down nearly every Khinzal that has been fired at Kyiv and about half of the Zircon missiles too, using technology that has existed for decades. IIRC one of the Khinzal missiles was even knocked out by a PAC-2 missile, which wasn't designed for that purpose.
Maybe AvanGuard is more competent and less overrated/overhyped than their other efforts, but there's no particularly good reason to believe that. Meanwhile the last time the US successfully tested a hypersonic weapon it was immediately greenlit for serial production, and I don't think that's because they are freaking out so much as that the US sandbags our capabilities while some of our competitors inflate theirs. You claim the Russians are ahead, but they keep putting their hypersonic engine researchers in jail. I don't buy it.
The real difference is maneuvering, but most of Russia's "hypersonic weapons" cannot actually do this. Hence why Ukraine has shot down nearly every Khinzal that has been fired at Kyiv and about half of the Zircon missiles too, using technology that has existed for decades. IIRC one of the Khinzal missiles was even knocked out by a PAC-2 missile, which wasn't designed for that purpose.
Maybe AvanGuard is more competent and less overrated/overhyped than their other efforts, but there's no particularly good reason to believe that. Meanwhile the last time the US successfully tested a hypersonic weapon it was immediately greenlit for serial production, and I don't think that's because they are freaking out so much as that the US sandbags our capabilities while some of our competitors inflate theirs. You claim the Russians are ahead, but they keep putting their hypersonic engine researchers in jail. I don't buy it.