This sounds familiar: Hot on the heels of the U.S. Air Force’s most recent failed test of an unmanned hypersonic vehicle, Russia now says it wants to jump into the hypersonic game with a long-range bomber. Will Russia’s newest Bear fly at 4,500 miles an hour? The Russian military sure hopes so.“I think we need to go down the route of hypersonic technology and we are moving in that direction and are not falling behind the Americans,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on Russian television. “The question is will we copy the Americans’ 40-year experience and create a [Northrop] B-2 analog … or will we go down a new, ultramodern technology route, looking to the horizon, and create a machine able to penetrate air defenses and carry out a strike on any aggressor.”The Russians want their plane operational by 2020, which doesn’t seem particularly realistic — we are talking about five times the speed of sound here, and Russia is just starting engine development. The U.S., meanwhile, has been investing in its Waverider program since 2004, and the last test of the X-51A scramjet-powered missile failed after just 15 seconds.As Defense Tech notes, it’s hard to imagine the U.S. turning the X-51A into a successful, operational aircraft by 2020 considering looming budget cuts and the problems plaguing the Pentagon’s most recent airframe development programs. At the same time, if we’re still that far away with an eight year head start, the Russians aren’t likely to make up much ground in such a short time frame.Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead.