The United States' prompt global strike will be able to cripple strategic forces in China, North Korea and Iran in the foreseeable future, whereas those in Russia will remain intact, claimed an article in Russian VPK News.

The story said Russian political and military leaders have become concerned about the probability of such an attack taking place since the U.S. is developing what is called the Prompt Global Strike (PGS), a system capable of delivering precision conventional weapon strikes anywhere in the world within one hour. According to the Pentagon's intentions, U.S. aircrafts and hypersonic conventional warheads will hence be able to strike an opponent country's nuclear silos and road mobile strategic missiles.

Despite Washington's official denials that Russia would form a potential target of its PGS, Moscow still felt the urge to analyze the chances of the U.S. launching a blitz strike against the world's biggest country.

Leaders from the Pentagon, the U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) earlier in their reports confirmed the primary PGS mission is to target China's anti-satellite systems and any nuclear facilities or weapons in Iran and North Korea.

The second mission on the PGS target list is to annihilate what the U.S. called "anti-intervention weapon systems," such as the People's Liberation Army's DF-21D, reportedly the world's first anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM). The ASBM is able to seriously restrict the mobility of any U.S. aircraft carrier battle group, meaning that the U.S. will have to destroy such a missile preemptively in the event of war.

As the U.S. military eyed fielding the PGS by 2015, most U.S. military experts expressed their doubts on the feasibility in using hypersonic missiles to attack terrorism – the third PGS mission -- as reliable intelligence is a precondition for any such hypersonic strike. Nonetheless, even during the U.S. operation to capture Osama bin Laden -- resulting in his death in May of 2011 -- the operatives were unsure if the world's most wanted man was really in the region as they had been led to believe.

Russia does possess far more fixed strategic bases and anti-satellite systems than do China, North Korea and Iran. In the west and south of its territory, Russia has deployed Iskander (NATO designation SS-26 Stone) inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM), capable of covering most military targets across the U.S. and Europe and therefore posing a huge threat to NATO. This makes them priority targets on the PGS strike list.

The U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia all showed that Washington had intended to remove its opponents' command and control mechanisms in what is known as decapitation strikes. Such initiatives failed to prove successful all the time, but did create a necessity for hypersonic weapons.

The PGS is unable to disarm Moscow in a quick blow, mainly because it cannot detect and track Russia's road mobile missiles patrolling the country's heartland. The effort to track missiles in real time requires satellite and aerial radar-based reconnaissance. As a result, spying on the world's largest country requires far more reconnaissance satellites the the Pentagon can actually afford; flying U-2 planes into Russian airspace would equal suicide.

Russian ICBM silos' locations are relatively easier to detect, but again, destroying them by PGS would prove difficult. Ammunition's impact has to be within an 8-meter radius of the silo in order to destroy the nuclear missile located inside. To ensure such accuracy, the PGS would have to switch from inertial-guided warheads to GPS-guided ones on its hypersonic missiles, a mismatch considering the extreme speed.

Should their speed slow down to 1000 meters per second, from a maximum of 5000 meters per second during its pre-terminal flight, they would become easy targets for Russia's S-400 and S-500 anti-aircraft missiles.

The U.S. PGS is unlikely to cause a substantial threat to Russia's Strategic Missile Troops. At least before 2020, the Pentagon will not be able to constantly monitor and detect Russia's road mobile nuclear missiles.

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