3M22 Zircon Hypersonic Cruise Missile

Pretty sure Zircon will slow down to Mach 4-4.5 in the terminal phase.

Why?

I would suggest it would normally fly at 30-50km altitude but by the time it has travelled all the way to the target it will have burned off a ton of fuel and be as light and as high a thrust to weight ratio as it is going to get.... in a steep corkscrew dive it should be able to combine engine thrust in full AB mode as well as gravity assistance to maintain that speed or even accelerate for the impact.

The Kh-22M is a mach 3.5 missile but only in the terminal dive where it accelerates to max speed... and it flys to the target at about 40km altitude to overfly the AEGIS Standard SAM and the F-14 and Phoenix missile combination...

The Kh-15 dives on the target at mach 5 and it is a solid fuelled rocket so in all likelyhood the dive is unpowered...

These things are shaped to cut through the air efficiently... terminal velocity is going to be rather high for them even when unpowered...

As a cruise missile against moving targets wth powerful ECM means - it needs self-guidance and manueverability. As the missile approaches the target and hits higher air densities it will need to slow down for its seekers to work and to conduct manuevers or correct its flight path. Which it almost certainly will need to do because targetted ships will change bearing and speed as part of evasive manuevers of their own, and of course launch their own ABMs and SAMs

But that would be self defeating... because by slowing down you extend the effective range of the enemy SAMs and interceptors against you... a Patriot interception ring might be 150km for a manned fighter plane operating at high subsonic speeds, but a missile moving at 3km per second it is not going to need to do too much manouvering to evade the Patriot missile even if it flys directly over the launcher... and once it reaches a point ... say 50km above the Patriot launcher there is no way a Patriot missile of any kind could then be launched to catch it or even climb to that altitude... there are no Patriot missiles able to move at 2.88km/s so it has already beaten it without any manouver at all.

Even if you used a Star Trek teleporter and magic and got the Patriot missile in front of the Zircon and perhaps a few metres to one side... by the time the proximity fuse set off the Patriots warhead the Zircon would have already blown past and the fragments of the Patriots warhead would not be travelling fast enough to catch up...

Of course it's possible that it could have an optional additional flight-profile, of literally hitting the target like a meteor at Mach 8-9. Would be good against ships in port or land targets

I would suspect the standard go to attack profile will be high altitude diving terminal corkscrew attack at a peak speed of mach 9... during its normal flight it will probably be moving at mach 7-8 or so...

And with 2-3 crew you cannot? yes you can. Kill/drug/bribe

The crew could send a warning signal that they are under attack and initiate a launch... for the US it would be too risky...

it is not answering my question Im afraid. There are limits of energy density. Even if you use it with minimal loss you still are restricted. .

There are pretty much two ways to get hypersonic speed at the moment for Russia... rocket and scramjet... 3/4ths of the solid fuel in a rocket engine is used for generating oxygen for the remaining 1/4 fuel to burn and it burns at a fixed rate that cannot be controlled or used efficiently (ie managed).
A scramjet gets its oxygen from the air it passes through so it can be a quarter the size and the thrust can be managed... if the missile shape is efficient at 40km altitude at mach 7 then the throttle can be set to fly at that speed on a scramjet and fuel is saved for later... with a rocket engine the fuel burns at a standard rate so it might use double the fuel the Scramjet is using and the missile might travel at mach 7.6... all that extra energy is wasted.

Look t so called GZUR, it should be light (1,5tons), small but it is only airborne.. You simply replace booster with aircraft. In case of Zircon you have UKSK so boosters or bigger fuel tanks are needed.

True, but being a scramjet powered missile the Zircon is going to need a rocket booster whether it is ground or sub or truck or train or air launched... the same as Yakhont or Brahmos or Onyx with their ramjet propulsion.

It is not as bad as it sounds because a ramjet/scramjet engine has a large empty volume at its core where air flows and is heated and fuel is added and burned so in that cavity solid rocket fuel is often stored, but even then a bit hanging out the back with more solid rocket fuel is often placed to accelerate the missile to as high and as fast as it can get before the main ramjet engine is started as that makes its job much easier and greatly extends range and increases flight speed.

Perhaps you 're right but I rather see it s UKSK-M on anything enough big to carry them 22350, CVNs, destroyers ro Orlans, JHusky.
However MRKs / 22160/22800/21631 will get UKSK with "lightweight" Zircons/calibers .

It is all just speculation... we really just have to wait till we hear more about this UKSK-M design...

I mean for all we know it might not even be bigger... it might just be designed to allow more efficient use of existing tube space by moving the wiring to the bottom or something and of course allowing SAMs to be loaded too... but if it is actually becoming a fully universal missile system then can we assume it can also carry Kh-35 and Shtil missiles too... how about Pantsir and TOR...

Maybe there will be a nice big article all about it when they fit the first one in their first upgraded Kirov class vessel... I guess that would be the earliest we could learn about it.

The thing is that they have said from the beginning that Kirov would get ten UKSK launchers for 80 missiles, but if the UKSK-M adds large SAMs then they should replace the Granit missile but also the Rif missiles and the SS-N-14 missiles on the front of the Kirov... they might put 20 or 30 UKSK-M launchers in the front area of a Kirov...

GREAT trolling but unfortunately little economic/military leverage

When the US puts missiles in Ukraine and Georgia, Russia could put missiles on these islands... the Cuban missile crisis all over again...

First of all if you can track such container you can track each and every Russian sub 24/7. what doesn't seem to be probable.
Secondly your own troops monitor it from distance. There is no movement of any ships in re you dont see.

Not suggesting they will see or hear all, but Russian subs and ships operating around the US will get a lot of attention 24/7 I don't think they will ignore what the Russians are doing and not sniff around everything in that area...

Form when Iran is an international air space?

Who said it was in Iranian airspace other than Iran?

If its no within 12miles then there are still intl waters ... same as elsewhere

My friend... are you suggesting we should expect the US to respect international treaties and rules... we are talking about the US Navy here
they rule the waves and make the worlds oceans safe for everyone... they have special rights and their EEZ extends the full width of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans...

The whole 1000km with 9Ma is 6min? what maneuvers can be done then by 100,000 tons CVN...
last 100km is like 35 seconds, how much does CVN course can change?

It would probably take them 6 minutes to stop a carrier group...

Besides from 30-50km altitude you get an excellent view of a significant part of the planet... you will see targets at enormous ranges...

You do not know how long the Cirkoengine works. Maybe only a few tens of seconds and then it flies without a sliding flight? If it works throughout the flight range it is very dangerous. If not on maneuvers, it will quickly lose energy.

It is not a ballistic weapon... it is a powered aircraft like a cruise missile or an aeroplane... its flight range is determined by its speed and the time its engine keeps running. Like a cruise missile or an aircraft it can throttle back to idle to cruise, or could even shut down its engine and coast, but it is not a ballistic weapon so it can restart the engine and accelerate and manouver all it wants...


What if it was in international airspace just outside the Iranian border.... who is to know?

The US will claim bloody murder no matter what... so who cares what they say about it.

That's a bit simplistic; the missile won't be flying at 9Ma for the whole flight-path. In fact that sort of figure was only mentioned as the maximum speed that the missile achieved at one point.

And logically the top speed would be easiest to achieve in a steep dive on the target with the engine running at full throttle... would you not agree?

Yes all Cirkon drawings rangs are based on the appearance of X-51. Cirkon will be very visible in IR

It has never been suggested it will be invisible... it wont matter if the US could track the missile from space... if they can't intercept it it will hit its target so being able to watch it go all the way from launch to boom will be entertaining but not fruitful.

You can use missiles with a larger range and IR guidance.

You probably can... but where are they?

Putting an IR seeker on a Saturn V rocket wont help in this case because the targets flight path is unpredictable... where do you direct the Saturn V rocket to go?

In reality it will start from rest, take time to accelerate into higher altitudes, following a sort-of ballistic trajectory and running up to its highest speed; then when it gets close to the target it will start to lose altitude and speed and applying course corrections. Which it will need to do after flying for some 10 minutes as yes even a carrier could have changed its expected position significantly by then compared to what was initially calculated

Not as much time as you might think... and as it flys towards its target it will be listening for radar signals warning it of threats... it will likely also have its own radar that might also detect incoming threats and trigger kick manouvers to jink left or right or up or down along with an increase or decrease in speed and then back on to target.

Being a weapon that can steer I don't think it will loose much speed turning a couple of degrees 100km away from the carrier group because the enemy carrier has moved maybe 3km at 20 knots in the six minutes since the missile was launched... from 100km away that 3km is going to be a tiny turn and I would not expect it to slow down if at all...

The Kh-22/Kh-32 are also air-breathing cruise missiles; but they function pretty much the same as the Kh-15, which is a ballistic missile; and the Zirkon won't be too much different based on what we've heard about it thus far.

No, they are not... both have dual rocket motors using the same toxic red fuming acid fuel... a cruise rocket and a higher energy terminal attack rocket.

No you can't. They are fire and forget missile and very slow. An IR detector can't know the distance between itself and the target. It will see the zirkon and try to hit it but it will just fly in front of it and miss by km.

Agreed... it would be like getting a lock on the sun with a Stinger... you can launch but you wont get a kill...

Yes you're right, Cirkon will be flying a long part through the ballistic trajectory.

Rubbish... it will climb under rocket booster thrust and when that burns out it will continue to climb on scramjet engine thrust and when it gets to its operational height it will level off and fly on body lift at mach 5 plus where the surface of the missile generates the lift that keeps it in the air... just like an aeroplane uses wings for lift with its forward speed the Zircon will use hypersonic airflow over its bodies surface to wave ride... with the scramjet motor generating minimal thrust to maintain speed... like an aeroplane... when it gets close to the target it will likely increase thrust to accelerate to max speed and then dive down on the target... all in controlled NON BALLISTIC flight.

Explicitly links it to existing Calibr platforms -> must fit in UKSK.

Well it makes sense, you don't develop a new universal large missile launcher, and then just ignore that and design your next major standard missile to not fit inside it...

The obvious benefits of standardisation don't last if you start making things that don't fit.

Its very funny how western analysts call russian weapons without photos fairytails, but at the same time they swear that the M1A3 and the M829A4 shell exist.

That is the problem with the American dream... you have to remain asleep... and you cannot question...

Zircon is going to fit in launch tubes currently used by Onyx... the primary difference is that the Onyx is high supersonic, while the Zircon is hypersonic... the Zircon will move much much faster but also much higher, which will effect its design in terms of shaping, but at the end of the day it is like a sleek 250 mile per hour car and a sleek 350 mile an hour car... the main difference is the engine and also the wheels.

If you replace a few bits in the nose and leading edges of the Onyx and give it a new scramjet engine instead of a ramjet one you could probably get much much improved performance... from the sounds of things they have developed new fuel for the Zircon and perhaps just that in the Onyx has improved performance to the limits of its ramjet design.

It makes sense to upgrade in production Onyx missiles with the new fuel now and get the better performance, but the Zircon has a motor designed to operate much much faster and a shape optimised for the higher speed, so when it is ready it will be a worthy replacement for Onyx, which could be sold to allies like China and India (the latter in the for of the Brahmos II and upgraded Brahmos as well).

It should be rather interesting because the proposed Brahmos M is supposed to be a lighter faster version of the first missile that can be carried on lighter aircraft and in much greater numbers. It was supposed to increase the flight speed from mach 2.5 to mach 3... but the new fuel is supposed to increase the speed of the first missile to double... mach 5... does that mean the lighter missile can fly at mach 6 being lighter, or is mach 5 the limit for the ramjet and it just uses less fuel and can therefore fly further.

(ie with a ramjet type engine if you use max thrust you burn max fuel, but if you reduce thrust and you only slow down a little or not at all then you can throttle back until you start slowing down and end up burning less fuel and extend your flight range by not wasting fuel. Of course as the fuel burns the missile gets lighter and the thrust to weight ratio of the missile rapidly improves so flight speed should increase over distance too).

New fuel technology is the most under-reported aspect in Russian missile development. There was a clear factor of two
improvement in solid rocket fuel performance allowing the train based ICBM to use regular rolling stock instead of rail-destroying
heavy wagons from the Soviet era. Now we see other advances in Zircon, and in Burevestnik as a totally new nuclear powered
propulsion tech never deployed before (I doubt Americans even tested anything like it). Meanwhile smug, deluded NATO chauvinists
really think that Russians are some sort of mud hut dwellers still living in the stone age.