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| Russia's Mysterious Super Weapon Creates Controversy in the West |
International Military - The Russian military is said to be developing a mysterious super weapon. In 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin introduced some of his country's newest generation weapons to the international community.
The weapons include 3M22 Zircon (Tsirkon) hypersonic missiles, scramjet-powered anti-ship maneuvers, and hypersonic land attack cruise missiles.
Quoted from Devence View, according to News Week journalist Brendan Cole, the Russian military recently completed one more test of the Zircon hypersonic missile.
The Russian Navy expects the Zircon missile to enter active service by the end of 2022. However, controversies over the capabilities of the new Russian weapon are starting to emerge in the West.
"Russia's recent Zircon cruise missile tests have left the west wondering, is Moscow's announcement that hypersonic weapons will be deployed by the end of 2022 really poses a major threat or not?"
The West is especially concerned about whether Zircon Hypersonic Missiles will have an impact on the Russia-Ukraine conflict or not? Many analysts believe that the new weapons will have limitations in relation to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
In fact, the Zircon is an anti-ship cruise missile developed to effectively deter the United States Navy and other NATO nations in the Black Sea.
However, another opinion has also emerged, Russia has used some of its anti-ship missiles such as the KH-22 and KH-32 to destroy land targets in Ukraine, such as bridges and ammunition depots that store western weapons supplies to Ukraine.
Therefore, the 3M22 Zircon hypersonic missile could be deployed with the Russian Navy as early as this year to deliver a precise, devastating and ultra-high-speed strike on Ukraine that the enemy cannot stop.
Please note, since January 2020, Russia has conducted several tests of the Zircon 3M22 missile. This missile is capable of striking targets deep within enemy territory up to a distance of 1,000 km with a top speed of Mach 9.
This type of advanced warfare weapon, is very difficult or almost impossible to intercept by the most advanced current or future missile defense systems of the future.
In this regard, western military experts think that the United States has only one way to counter such advanced weapons, namely by deploying interceptor missiles at the Incirlik air base on Turkish soil.
However, the use of hypersonic missiles such as the Zircon to destroy ground targets instead of destroying the warships they were originally designed for, raises many questions about their usefulness, especially on the actual battlefield.
Supersonic missiles such as the P-800 "Yakhont or Oniks", KH-22, KH-32, and others have been known to have very poor accuracy when hitting ground targets, because their active radar probes are not optimized for such missions. The extremely high speed in this case is a weak point when there is not enough time to aim carefully and accurately.
Therefore, for a very expensive hypersonic missile like the Zirkon (offcourse hypersonic missiles are very expensive compared to supersonic missiles or other types), it would be too wasteful to force it to do the wrong mission as mentioned in the example above.