Why Russia needs hypersonic missiles

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Peace on our planet is, unfortunately, mainly due to the balance of the strategic potentials of the main rival countries. Geopolitical parity was first violated in 1945 by the appearance of nuclear weapons in the US military arsenal.

In 1947, the USSR was able to create an atomic bomb, but the country's leadership was faced with the problem of delivering a warhead to the target. The first temporary measure was to copy the American B-29 bomber, which at that time served as the main carrier of weapons of mass destruction.

The emergence of intercontinental missiles again upset the strategic balance, this time in favor of the USSR. However, the ballistic trajectory turned out to be easily predictable, which created the conditions for the destruction of the delivery vehicle at different stages of its flight.

For the first time in 1973, the Israeli armed forces faced the problem of the low effectiveness of air defense systems against high- altitude and ultra-high-speed targets. A Soviet multi-purpose MiG-25 aircraft flew over the territory of the state at a great height. All actions commonly usedin such cases, including the launch of anti-aircraft missiles, proved useless. The unique ceiling and fantastic speed for those times simply did not allow them to catch up with the target.

In the early nineties, development scientists in different countries began research in the field of creating weapons that would be difficult to neutralize even if detected by warning systems.

Russia's hypersonic missiles under development are a response to America's Prompt Global Strike program.

Counteracting US dominance in the area of the strategic initiative is on a number of fronts.

One of them was the creation of warheads capable of changing the trajectory after their separation from the warhead and reaching the target from an unpredictable direction.

Another line of development of hard-to-vulnerable delivery vehicles is Russia's hypersonic missiles. Their main difference from conventional ballistic missiles is their speed, which is many times greater than the M number (which corresponds to approximately 1070 km/h).

The first experiments to create new models of weapons that would be difficult to intercept began in the eighties. The Dyna Soar X-20 was an American project of an unmanned orbital aircraft that launched in the stratospheric layers of the atmosphere (at an altitude of about 30 thousand meters) from a supersonic aircraft. The answer could be Russian hypersonic missiles of the Spiral aerospace system, capable of reaching speeds of up to 7 thousand km / h,however, both programs were soon phased out. R&D costs have proved unsustainable even for the US economy.

Three decades have passed, but the task of maintaining strategic parity has not lost its relevance. Zircon is the name of Russia's new hypersonic missiles.

2013, International Aviation and Space Salon in Zhukovsky. The joint Russian-Indian venture BrahMosaerospace announces plans to create weapons that the latest and promising missile defense systems cannot intercept.

The first tests of a hypersonic missile in Russia have shown that it can reach speeds three times higher than that of the American Tomahawk at altitudes ranging from 10 meters to 14 kilometers. The combat load is 300 kg, the design is two-stage. Overall dimensions: length about 10 meters, diameter 700 mm. The total weight at the start is less than 4 tons, including the shipping container.

The basic design for the Brahmos GZR and the Zircon anti-ship system being developed in parallel was the submarine-launched Onyx P-800 missile. Design work began back in 1999, and in June 2001, the first test launches were made at a test site in the Indian state of Orissa. It is assumed that the new hypersonic missiles of Russia and India can be launched from aircraft of the MiG-29 class.

Another alternative ultra-fast weapon system called "Cold" was tested at the Sary-Shagan test site at the end of 1991. At the heart of the powerinstallation in its design used the engine of the S-200 air defense missile with excellent performance. The financial crisis prevented completion of the tests.