Report: Russia Could Deploy Hundreds Of ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ In The Mediterranean
Russia could be in a position to deploy hundreds of Zircon hypersonic missiles across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, new reports indicate.
Reports on english.pravda.ru, a Russian newspaper, suggest that Russia has been considering deploying the ‘state of the art hypersonic’ weapons close to European borders to dissuade NATO from its “expansionist politics”.
The aim would be to block a potential threat from NATO or the US by neutralising its European neighbours.
Zircon is a manoeuvring, winged hypersonic cruise missile with a lift-generating centre body.
A booster stage with solid-fuel engines accelerates it to supersonic speeds, after which a scramjet motor with liquid-fuel in the second stage accelerates it to hypersonic speed.
Zircon missiles can travel at a speed of Mach 8–Mach 9 (6,090–6,851 mph; 9,800–11,025 km/h; 2.7223–3.0626 km/s).
This would give it enough power to be invisible to radar systems and breech Naval defenses.
It has a range of around 1,000km and was tested for the first time around a year ago. It has recently been claimed that it can be fired from mobile-launchers.
Mark Almond, director of the Crisis Research Institute, in Oxford, England told Newsweek, that the Zirkon missiles are ” part of Putin’s saber-rattling to distract the West from his ongoing operations in south-east Ukraine”.
“That said, the West is inhibited by Putin’s silent nuclear blackmail from going too far in helping Ukraine. The Kremlin wants to win a limited war against the West inside Ukraine and the West wants to defeat Russia in a limited war inside Ukraine.”
What do you think of this potential threat to the Mediterranean?
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