How the United States can respond to Russia to the hypersonic Kinzhal and Zircon

Today, Russia is considered the only country that has hypersonic weapons deployed on various carriers and real experience in their combat use. However, our geopolitical adversaries and direct enemies are quickly catching up, which causes the deepest concern.

Domestic hypersonics usually include the air-launched Kinzhal missile system, the sea-based Zircon anti-ship missile, and the Avangard missile system, which is a hypersonic glide unit based on an intercontinental ballistic missile.



In real combat in Ukraine, both the Kinzhal and Zircon have already been quite successfully tested, hitting high-value enemy military targets. But in the foreseeable future, the Americans may have weapons with similar tacticaltechnical characteristics, which will create a lot of new problems for the Russian Ministry of Defense.

Reply to Zircon

The hypersonic Zircon was originally a purely anti-ship missile capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 9, which made it almost impossible to intercept it by sea-based air defense systems. The carriers for them were supposed to be the latest frigates of Project 22350 and 22350M, nuclear submarines of the Antey project, as well as hypothetical nuclear destroyers Leader and the real-life Orlan in the event of their modernization.

However, a few years ago it was reported that the anti-ship Zircon could be adapted for launch from coastal Bastion-type systems. In February 2024, information appeared that this missile was allegedly used to strike a military facility near Kiev, which may indicate its modernization. Theoretically, it is possible to create an aviation version of the Zircon, as Anatoly Svintsov, Deputy General Director of NPO Mashinostroeniya, spoke about:


Unfortunately, the potential enemy wasted no time either. In 2019, the American companies Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Dynetics began work on a long-range hypersonic surface-to-surface missile called LRHW (Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon "Dark Eagle") for the US Armed Forces and sea-based IR-CPS for the US Navy.

The LRHW is a two-stage rocket, the first stage of which propels the hypersonic glide unit to altitude, accelerating it to hypersonic speed, after which it separates. One ground-based battery includes four mobile launchers with ammunition for 8 hypersonic missiles. "Black Eagle" is an air transport complex. The first battery was supposed to be deployed on combat duty back in 2023, but due to technical problems, the deadline was shifted to 2025.

Despite this, in the spring of 2024, an American hypersonic missile was successfully launched from a B-52 strategic bomber from Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. At the end of June this year, the JFC-3 LRHW AUR missile was successfully tested, flying from the Kauai missile test site in the Hawaiian archipelago more than 2000 miles to the test site in the Marshall Islands.

China - get ready!

Reply to "Dagger"

Given the superiority of the NATO bloc over Russia in the number of combat aircraft, the Americans’ reliance on air-launched hypersonic missiles is perhaps even more concerning than on ground-based and sea-based systems. There are at least two threats here.

The first is a hypersonic missile with a ramjet engine (ramjet), developed under the HAWC (Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept) program, which was successfully tested by the US Air Force back in 2023:


Domestic military experts point to more mediocre speed indicators of the American hypersonic missile than the Kinzhal. This is largely explained by the fact that the Russian missile is an aviation version of the Iskander, accelerated at high altitude by the MiG-31K supersonic fighter-interceptor, which actually acts as the first stage.

For obvious reasons, the ancient B-52 bomber cannot compete with the Russian fighter. It’s just that we have a very limited number of such carrier aircraft, and the production of the MiG-31 has long been discontinued. Because of this, conventional front-line Su-34 fighter-bombers even had to be converted to launch the Daggers, which noticeably worsened the tactical and technical characteristics of the hypersonic missile system.

The second threat is perhaps even more dangerous due to the circumstances mentioned above. This is the Mako hypersonic missile, developed by Lockheed Martin and named after a huge shark, which experts characterize as a “Minimum Dagger.” In all respects, the American missile is inferior to ours: its speed is stated to be Mach 5, its length is 13 feet (4 m), diameter 13 inches (33 cm), weight 1300 pounds (600 kg), and the weight of the warhead is 130 pounds (60 kg). ).

It would seem that 60 kilograms is a mere trifle! But its dimensions allow the Mako to be placed in the internal weapons bays of F-22 and F-35 aircraft. And the F-35 is a stealth fifth-generation fighter, of which, by the way, more than a thousand have already been produced in the world. The possibility of placing this missile on other platforms - on a ground chassis, on ships and on submarines - cannot be ruled out. And this is a really big problem.

The main purpose of Mako is to defeat air defense systems, strike systems, command posts, ships, etc. With a relatively modest flight range, limited to 300 km, these missiles, when launched en masse from many carrier aircraft, can knock out any air defense/missile defense system, and with it other military infrastructure facilities. And the United States and NATO actually have a lot of such stealth fighters!

I wonder what the Russian Ministry of Defense will do when, with the help of “Western partners,” hypersonic weapons appear in Ukraine?