its target by two dozen miles. However China has responded that the vehicle was a spacecraft, and not a missile; there was a July 2021 test of a spaceplane, according to Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian; Todd Harrison points out that an orbital trajectory would take 90 minutes for a spaceplane to circle Earth (which would defeat the mission of a weapon in hypersonic flight). The US DoD's headquarters (The Pentagon) reported in October 2021 that two such hypersonic launches have occurred; one launch did not demonstrate the accuracy needed for a precision weapon; the second launch by China demonstrated its ability to change trajectories, according to Pentagon reports on the 2021 competition in arms capabilities. In 2022 China unveiled two more hypersonic models. An AI simulation has revealed that a Mach 11 aircraft can simply outrun a Mach 1.3 fighter attempting to engage it, while firing its missile at the "pursuing" fighter. This strategy entails a fire control system to accomplish an over-the-shoulder missile launch, which does not yet exist (2023). Russia In 2016, Russia is believed to have conducted two successful tests of Avangard, a hypersonic glide vehicle. The third known test, in 2017, failed. In 2018, an Avangard was launched at the Dombarovskiy missile base, reaching its target at the Kura shooting range, a distance of 3700 miles (5955 km). Avangard uses new composite materials which are to withstand temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Celsius (3,632 degrees Fahrenheit). The Avangard's environment at hypersonic speeds reaches such temperatures. Russia considered its carbon fiber solution to be unreliable, and replaced it with new composite materials. Two Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) will first be mounted on SS-19 ICBMs; on 27 December 2019 the weapon was first fielded to the Yasnensky Missile Division, a unit in the Orenburg Oblast. In an earlier report, Franz-Stefan Gady named the unit as the 13th Regiment/Dombarovskiy Division (Strategic Missile Force). In 2021 Russia launched a 3M22 Zircon antiship missile over the White Sea, as part of a series of tests. "Kinzhal and Zircon (Tsirkon) are standoff strike weapons". In February 2022, a coordinated series of missile exercises, some of them hypersonic, were launched on 18 February 2022 in an apparent display of power projection. The launch platforms ranged from submarines in the Barents sea in the Arctic, as well as from ships on the Black sea to the south of Russia. The