Which Countries Have Hypersonic Missiles? The 2026 List

A hypersonic missile is a weapon that flies at five times the speed of sound or faster, Mach 5, and can manoeuvre during flight rather than following a fixed ballistic arc. The Congressional Research Service, in its August 2025 report on hypersonic weapons, divides them into two types: glide vehicles, which a rocket lifts to high altitude before they separate and glide to the target, and cruise missiles powered by air-breathing scramjet engines.

The definition matters because almost every long-range ballistic missile exceeds Mach 5 as it falls back through the atmosphere. Several weapons sold as hypersonic, including Russia’s Kinzhal and Iran’s Fattah, are ballistic missiles with manoeuvring warheads rather than true gliders. The hypersonic weapons that worry air defence planners most are those that fly low and change course, since radar on the ground sees them late and an interceptor may get only one chance.

Russia has four weapons it describes as hypersonic, and it was the first country to fire them in a war. The Avangard glide vehicle rides on SS-19 intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Russian sources say it entered combat duty in December 2019, with tests reportedly reaching Mach 20. The ship-launched 3M22 Zircon cruise missile is credited by Russian sources with Mach 6 to 8 and a range of about 625 miles, roughly 1,000 kilometres, and was deployed on the frigate Admiral Gorshkov in January 2023.

The Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, a manoeuvring ballistic missile carried by MiG-31K fighters, was first used in combat against a depot in western Ukraine, the Russian Defence Ministry said on March 19, 2022. Russian media claim Mach 10 and a range of up to 1,200 miles, figures U.S. intelligence has not publicly confirmed. The newest is the Oreshnik, which struck the Yuzhmash plant in Dnepropetrovsk on November 21, 2024, and which the Pentagon described as an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in December 2025 that Oreshnik launchers had arrived in Belarus, and the Russian Defence Ministry released video on December 30 showing them on combat duty there, under Russian control.

China fields the most varied hypersonic arsenal, built mainly around missiles that carry glide vehicles. The road-mobile DF-17, first paraded in Beijing in October 2019, carries the DF-ZF glide vehicle, and U.S. intelligence analysts assess its range at about 1,000 to 1,500 miles, or 1,600 to 2,400 kilometres, according to the Congressional Research Service. China has tested the DF-ZF at least nine times since 2014 and reportedly fielded it in 2020.

The longer-range DF-27 also has a glide vehicle option, according to the Pentagon, which in its 2025 report treated the missile as fielded for the first time. At the parade in Beijing on September 3, 2025, one formation carried three hypersonic types: the YJ-21 anti-ship missile, launched from ships or aircraft, and the land-based DF-26D and DF-17. Together they give China hypersonic options against both warships and land bases across the western Pacific.

Yes, but only just, and not yet in numbers. The U.S. Army’s Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, named Dark Eagle in April 2025, has a reported range of 1,725 miles, about 2,780 kilometres, and each battery has four launchers and up to eight missiles, according to the Congressional Research Service’s July 2026 update on the program. The Government Accountability Office reported that the first battery would not receive missiles before the January-March quarter of 2026, more than two years late, and Lieutenant General Frank Lozano, the Army’s senior officer for the program, said in March 2026 that the battery at Joint Base Lewis-McChord was “within a few weeks” of receiving them.

The same missile is the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike, which is being integrated on Zumwalt class destroyers through 2026. It flew successful tests from Cape Canaveral on December 12, 2024 and March 26, 2026. The Air Force followed with a $694 million production contract for the ARRW, a bomber-launched glider with a reported range of about 1,000 miles, while the Navy has ordered the much cheaper Blackbeard missile for its Super Hornets. Unlike the Russian and Chinese systems, all U.S. hypersonic weapons are conventionally armed, which demands far greater accuracy.

Both claim to, and neither claim has been independently confirmed. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards unveiled the Fattah on June 6, 2023, claiming a range of 1,400 kilometres and a speed of Mach 15, but released no footage of a launch, the Associated Press reported. The Guards have since said they fired Fattah missiles at Israel, yet the Congressional Research Service assessed in August 2025 that Iran had carried out only foundational hypersonic research and “may not be pursuing a hypersonic weapons capability at this time.” The Fattah is a medium-range ballistic missile with a manoeuvring warhead, and it sits in that class in our estimate of how many missiles Iran has left.

North Korea first claimed a glide vehicle test with the Hwasong-8 in September 2021, though reports suggested it reached only about Mach 3. On January 6, 2025 Pyongyang claimed a new intermediate-range missile had flown 1,500 kilometres at Mach 12, which South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff called likely deception after tracking a flight of around 1,100 kilometres.

Japan, India, France, South Korea and Australia are the most advanced of the next group. Japan’s Defence Ministry deployed the Type 25 Hyper Velocity Gliding Projectile to Camp Fuji on March 31, 2026, for the defence of remote islands. Its first version has a range of several hundred kilometres and, by the Congressional Research Service’s account, flies at high supersonic rather than hypersonic speed, with a fully hypersonic version expected by 2030.

India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation flew a long-range hypersonic missile from Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Island off Odisha on November 16, 2024, designed for ranges beyond 1,500 kilometres, while the BrahMos-II hypersonic cruise missile developed with Russia remains years behind its original 2017 target. France flew its V-MAX glide vehicle demonstrator in June 2023, and Australia worked with the United States on the SCIFiRE scramjet program that feeds the U.S. Air Force’s Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile.