Russian scientist expert in hypersonic flight arrested for treason

Aug. 6 () –

Russian scientist Alexander Shipliuk, an expert in hypersonic flight, was arrested this Friday for an alleged crime of treason, according to Russian public media.

Shipliuk is the director of the Siberian Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and becomes after his arrest the third Russian scientist arrested on suspicion of treason in recent months.

The scientific director of the Institute, Vasili Fomin, explained to the Russian news agency TASS that Shipliuk has been sent to the Lefortovo preventive detention center in Moscow.

His arrest follows the June 27 arrest of the institute’s chief investigator, Anatoli Maslov, suspected of transferring state secret data related to hypersonic missiles.

According to the institute’s website, Shipliuk runs a technology lab with unique wind tunnels built especially to simulate hypersonic conditions.

On June 30, the Novosibirsk Sovetski District Court arrested another scientist, Dimitri Kolker, a researcher at the Institute of Laser Physics of the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Kolker, who was diagnosed with stage four cancer, died while being transferred from the pre-trial detention center.

Russia, China and the United States are working to develop hypersonic flight vehicle weapons, highly maneuverable missiles that can fly at hypersonic speed while adjusting course and altitude to fly below radar detection height and thus exceed missile defenses.

Russia is believed to have one heavy vehicle in its arsenal, the Avangard system, which Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed in 2018 was “virtually invulnerable” to Western air defenses.