kEiThZ
Superstar
They have already used hypersonic missiles in Ukraine (though in very limited quantities)
The Russians claim a lot of things.....Enjoy the video in this article from a pro-Russian American blogger. You'll get to see the world's slowest Hypersonic missile.
No, these videos do not show a Russian hypersonic strike in Ukraine
The Russian military claimed to have used a hypersonic missile on March 18 to strike an underground warehouse in western Ukraine. Two videos have emerged on social networks claiming to show this attack,…
observers.france24.com
Using them to attack relatively low value targets would be foolish.
But would be totally in line with demonstrated Russian decision-making in this conflict. They've used cruise missiles to take out artillery systems in this war. Even suggesting that in a NATO planning cell might get you fired. I won't even get into the whole bit about bombing daycares and hospitals where they combine war crimes with bad resource allocation.
Hypersonic missiles are really meant to defeat the missile defenses of high value naval assets like US carriers. It is worth throwing $10M missiles at multi-billion dollar carrier.
The biggest value of a hypersonic weapon is that its trajectory provides limited warning. It's not ballistic, so the trajectory is not predictable (ballistic missiles are like throwing a baseball). It's also fast enough that a tail chase intercept may not be able to close fast enough. The Russian Kinzhal is a bit borderline.... They took a ballistic missile (the Iskander) and modified it so they could air launch. It doesn't have the same evasiveness as say the American (boost glide) ARRW or (scramjet cruise) HAWC missiles. Let's just say like a lot of other things, the Russians are pushing the line of truthiness on this one. Which is why you never see anybody in NATO even flinch when they start talking about hypersonic this or that.
Also, hypersonics is kinda hard when missiles are built with the same quality as everything else in Russia....
Last edited: