An Impulse.

In therapeutic sense a large portion of the UTube is dedicated to coming soon, very soon, any minute now some sort of the breakthrough in developing of hypersonic for US military. Because of that, such videos like this,

gather millions of views of the same type of people who applaud each Musk's rocket explosion as yet another success which for sure, very soon, any minute now will ensure humanity's (meaning the US) travel to Mars and beyond. Russians launching shitload of stuff and people to space, evidently, is not as exciting as watching failures of dubious concepts being sold to the public as an achievement. Same applies to this video, which still didn't account for the cancellation of the AARW hypersonic program last month, and the fact that the US still doesn't have:

1. High impulse fuel, such as Decilin-M developed by Russians for their hypersonic weapons which allows them to maintain hypersonic speeds throughout the duration of the whole flight. Unlike it is the case with this "sled" in the video which is hailed as some kind of achievement, you can accelerate the thing at a 10 mile-long track to M=8 by all kinds of means. But you need a consistent high impulse fuel to maintain the hypersonic flight not at 10 mile long track, but more along a complex trajectory ranging from tens to thousands of miles. That's the issue. 

As we know, Impulse is a change of the momentum (mv) of the physical body, which is 

Obviously, this is for a simplified case when the mass of a body remains constant, in case of 3M22 Zircon its mass will be constantly reduced due to expenditure of its fuel (Decilin-M). Looks like the US is still in search of such a fuel. 

2. Even more important is the ability to control missile (communicate with it) and allow missile to use its targeting system. That is the whole other can of worms and this one Russia did solve. How? I don't know--I can speculate--but I don't want to. But I am sure a wealth of data from SMO on a successful use of hypersonic weapons by Russia will continue to contribute to constant improvement of such weapons and the gap will only grow, especially in the field of the powered hypersonic flight. Rumor has it, new versions of Zircons will have an astonishing range in excess of 2,000 kilometers and speeds reaching M=15. If not already.

But speaking of an impulse, in a larger, metaphysical sense--this impulse was applied to Russia after seeing a complete insanity in Washington in the last 25 years. Necessity feeds the progress, and Russians never treated weapons lightly. And often used most advanced weapons first. But unlike artillery shells, REAL hypersonic weapons club is so exclusive and technologies ranging from fuels, materials, electronics and propulsion are so advanced, that for now it is only Russia who has them and used them to a devastating effect in 404.