…from PressTV, Tehran
[ Editor’s Note: Color me surprised. This is the first time I have ever seen a missile ‘disappear’ on launch due to its speed being faster than the eye could see.
But it is a long way from having the technology and a good launch, to have enough produced and deployed to enjoy the added defense fruits of the labor.
Russia has to operate under the reality of having significantly fewer weapons than the US and NATO. Russia actually decreased its defense budget for the year. The flip side to that is it has significantly lower production costs versus the sky high ones, on purpose, of the US.
Russia also has wisely not built a major offensive capability into its military. As a practical matter, it cannot afford to. Just to defend the large size of the country uses up all the military power it can budget for.
For those with a working mind, they can figure out that the need for a European NATO could be viewed as another hoax, another long term money generator for the defense industries.
China is in a similar situation. It has no military interests, like Russia does not, and having to do ‘in you face’ naval patrols off the US coasts, showing that they can get close to our shores for a first strike positioning, like the US has always been doing with the US Navy.
Yet our troops are indoctrinated that we are out defending the country on the other side of the world, when we are really positioning ourselves to launch first strikes. There is only one major power that can maintain aggression all over the planet, and that is the US. That excludes the submarine forces, which of course roam all over.
Americans need to review their military A,B,Cs to not get sucked into the silly propaganda the US puts out about defending us from threats. The real perversion in all of this is our involvement and supporting of proxy terrorism, creating a whole new criminal military class of ex-military people, where if the US were a member of the ICC, many would have future appointments there.
Does it not enter into their minds about the inconsistency of the oath they took in light of the work they really do, such as using the Kurds to help steal the Syrian people’s oil, water and farmland resources? Has one veterans organization ever publicly opposed this? I think not… Jim W. Dean ]
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– First published … October 07, 2020 –
Russia has successfully test-launched a hypersonic cruise missile, in a move praised by President Vladimir Putin as a step toward strengthening the country’s security.
Speaking to the president by video conference on Tuesday, chief of the Russian army’s general staff, Valery Gerasimov, said the launch of the Tsirkon (Zircon) hypersonic cruise missile had been successfully carried out from the White Sea on Tuesday.
The Russian Defense Ministry also published a video of the launch, which shows a rocket starting up from an open launch container situated on the upper deck of the ship’s bow circling in the air and flying toward its target in the Barents Sea.
“The task was completed successfully, a direct hit was registered,” Gerasimov said. “The range of the flight reached 450 kilometers, maximum altitude totaled 28 kilometers, and the duration of the flight totaled 4.5 minutes.”
“The missile developed a speed of over Mach 8,” he added.
Putin praised the test-launch, describing it as an important event that contributes to the nation’s security.
“I would like to thank all of you for the work done, for its results, and express hope that in the future all of the specialists involved in the rearmament of the Russian military will [continue to] work as efficiently and as persistently as it has done to this point,” the president said during the video meeting with Gerasimov.
The Zircon hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile is expected to enter service in the coming years.
The testing of the missile began five years ago, with nearly a dozen launches completed by 2018. Back then, Putin mentioned the missile in an address to the Russian parliament, describing it as one of the main strategic systems capable of evading US missile defenses.
Hypersonic weapons can take missile and nuclear warfare to a new and stronger level since they can travel much faster than current ballistic and cruise missiles, at different altitudes, and with the maneuverability that makes them difficult to track and target with current missile defense systems.
Jim W. Dean is VT Editor Emeritus. He was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022. He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews. He now writes and posts periodically for VT.
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I’m thinking an anti-missile missile, armed with one of those “Beirut specials” could be an effective point defense deterrent against hypersonic projectiles. You don’t have to hit it, just detonate a 5-6 kiloton device in front of it,…problem solved.
Impracticable as you have to first pick and track them. This an object moving over 3,000 m/s. Made more complex as Zircon will eventually be launched from air, ship, land and sub.
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