• A top researcher in hypersonic flight was detained on Friday on treason charges.
• The third Russian scientist to be detained on treason suspicions this summer is Dr. Alexander Shiplyuk, director of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
• A second scientist, Dmitry Kolker, a researcher at the Institute of Laser Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was detained on June 30 by the Sovetsky District Court of Novosibirsk.
• Kolker was jailed on suspicion of state treason for allegedly working with China’s security agencies.

According to Russian official media, a top researcher in hypersonic flight was detained on Friday on treason charges.

The third Russian scientist to be detained on treason suspicions this summer is Dr. Alexander Shiplyuk, director of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.

Shiplyuk was taken to the Lefortovo pre-trial detention facility in Moscow, according to Vasily Fomin, the scientific head of the institute, who spoke to the Russian news agency TASS.

His incarceration follows the arrest of Anatoly Maslov, the institute’s chief researcher, on June 27 for allegedly sharing state-secret information about hypersonic weapons.

The institute’s website states that Shiplyuk is in charge of a technology lab with distinctive wind tunnels created especially for mimicking hypersonic conditions.

A second scientist, Dmitry Kolker, a researcher at the Institute of Laser Physics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was detained on June 30 by the Sovetsky District Court of Novosibirsk.

Kolker was jailed on suspicion of state treason for allegedly working with China’s security agencies.

Kolker, who had been given a stage four cancer diagnosis, passed just while he was being moved from the pretrial detention facility.

Russia, China, and the US military are collaborating to create hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) weapons.

Theoretically capable of flying at hypersonic speeds while modifying course and altitude to evade radar detection and avoid missile defenses, these weapons are incredibly agile.

Such weapons, according to experts, are exceedingly difficult to counter.

The Avangard system, which Russian President Vladimir Putin said in 2018 was “practically invulnerable” to Western air defenses, is believed to be an HGV in Russia’s arsenal.

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