3M22 Zircon Hypersonic Cruise Missile

In that case Maneuverability is not the correct word here, because maneuverability is defined as the ability to change the speed and flight direction of a missile. Obviously at hypersonic speed a cruise missile will not be able to carry out terminal manoeuvre.

Of course it will...

As far as interception of hyper sonic missiles is concerned the U.S has already created several prototypes of Directed Energy Weapons, some of which are entering limited production. For example the AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System or XN-1 LaWS. In the interim, we have AD systems like the Oerlikon 35/1000 Revolver Gun, which fires the Advanced Hit Efficiency And Destruction (AHEAD) ammunition.

That is really cool, but what is their effective range and can they fire vertically?

Covering 3.2km per second in a vertical dive down onto a ship means one second before impact you have one second to destroy the incoming target that is initially 3.2km away vertically up and the next second is penetrating the deck of your ship.

The state of the art AHEAD projectile is programmed by a muzzle based electromagnetic inductor, which sets an electronic timer to activate and separate the projectile into 152 heavy tungsten metal spin-stabilized sub-projectiles (3.3 gram each), forming a lethal cone shaped metal cloud, placed ahead of the incoming hypersonic missile in its flight path.

How precise is the timer because if the target accelerates during its dive those rounds might detonate level with the incoming round which means short of a direct hit it will not effect the incoming missile.

Patriots in Desert Storm were not designed to intercept mach 7 targets, which is much slower so the fragments from the Patriot warhead explosions shattered the tail end of the Scuds but this was in the terminal phase of the attack when the rocket motors were not running any more... so these Patriots cut the rear of these missiles to ribbons but the warheads still fell on their targets and made huge holes in the ground...

Obviously, great and wise MBDA surely can make pop-up sea-skimming hypersonic missile.

Those are supposed to be supersonic missiles... will be a while before hypersonic comes in to the picture...

The funny part of that video is that there is a single shipping crate at a port with no air defence that opens and has cruise missiles which is immediately detected by satellite and there happens to be a ship offshore available to launch a missile to attack but no missiles to defend...

I get that. Therefore, I had mentioned that in the near future hyper sonic missiles will be engaged by DEW and as of now they will be engaged by electromagnetic rounds fired by AD systems like the Oerlikon 35/1000 Revolver Gun.

So if they can be engaged right now by 35mm cannon then why is hypersonic manouvering scramjet powered missiles seen as such a threat...

You do understand that even if your 35mm gun scores a direct hit on a vertically diving Zircon with half of its tungsten penetrators and completely obliterates its guidance radar the speed it is moving it will still hit the ship five times faster than any currently used rifle bullet and rip an enormous hole in the ship that few vessels could survive let alone continue to operate...

Another factor of course is... which western navies have 35mm guns on their ships at the moment... and can they fire 90 degrees straight up?

A swarm attack will also be confined to a small area. Moreover, you do realize how expensive it is to launch several swarm attacks with hypersonic weapons, don't you. Barring the US and China how many countries can afford that?

You don't need to bar the US, because they don't have any hypersonic anti ship weapons, and swarm could be two or three missiles at once because few systems can reliably intercept one missile let alone two or three.

Even a Gatling gun can rip open a hypersonic cruise missile

Hahahahahahahahahaha... who told you that?

Do you know that when the Soviets went to sea skimming supersonic missiles like Onyx the US Navy did proper tests on Phalanx and Goal Keeper... and then they started transitioning to SEARAM missiles instead of Phalanx or improved Phalanx with a larger calibre gun...

Gatling guns are fine for subsonic cruise missiles... which is why the AK-630, Duet, Kashtan and Kashtan-M and new Pantsir ranges still have them, but they also have missiles for faster targets... and to engage targets at greater ranges from the ships.

The tracking part will be taken care of by JSTAR and AWACS that are part of NATO's C4ISR architecture. They will pass on this information to the AD systems like Oerlikon 35/1000 which can then engage the hostile hypersonic missile.

They can hand off specific targets to specific air defence systems, but they can't provide target interception data in real time so the platform does not need a lock for itself...

GarryB wrote: Of course it will...

Ok I'll bite. Can you explain how a hypersonic missile will make a series of terminal maneuver? Do you have the math for this?

Isos wrote:Look at 1:38. The missile will still fly at hypersonic speed straight at the target.

Look at it again. The missile is blown clean off.

Ok I'll bite. Can you explain how a hypersonic missile will make a series of terminal maneuver? Do you have the math for this?

Maths?

Long range high speed SAMs of the S-400 and S-500 intercept incoming targets with flight speeds over 1.8km/s... nudol will be even faster.... S-500 intercepts targets moving at up to 7km/s so the closing speed is going to be enormous... do you think these weapons would be of any use at all if there was no way for them to manouver to intercept their targets?

An R-77 will get a general target box for it to fly to on an interception and over most of its flight it will be flying towards that box of space where it will turn on its own radar and look for its target... if the target continues at the same speed and same height and direction... which it should because it has no reason to realise it is under attack... then the R-77 will fly to this interception location and when it reaches it it will turn on its radar to look ahead for the target which if everything goes to plan should be right in front of it... perhaps 5-10km away in the centre of its view... this radar scan will alert most targets that they are under attack so they might start manouvering hard to become a difficult target, but at 5-10km away with the target in its centre view moving at high speed and possibly above and diving down at the target an R-77 will then track and follow the target to impact by manouvering as the target manouvers.

An S-400 or S-500 interception will pretty much be the same but over much greater distances and much faster moving targets.

What makes you think a hypersonic missile with its own scramjet propulsion cannot manouver at any portion of its flight... especially the terminal portion where 90% of its fuel has burned off and it is as light as it is going to be but still with full power scramjet engine propulsion?

Its ability to manouver should be at its maximum because it will have its best power to weight ratio and it will be descending on its target.... even just a random corkscrew flight path would render it rather hard to defeat on its way down.

A ship nearby firing AHEAD rounds would have to stop firing by the time the missile was 3km above the target it was flying towards because by that stage the rounds the ship is firing will be hitting the ship or the water beneath it because of the lead the guns would have to aim to to hit the missile...

Look at it again. The missile is blown clean off.

The missile has exploded because the gun rounds have set off its HE warhead and shattered the missiles body... the Granit uses a titanium armoured plate to both protect the HE warhead but also to act as a armour penetration cap so the warhead remains intact till it penetrates inside the ship and explodes there to do more damage. The Phalanx CIWS uses 12.7mm calibre penetrators when being fired at anti ship missiles... they have an effective range of 1.8km... the tungsten material launched by AHEAD rounds would lack the velocity to penetrate the armour penetrating cap on the Zircon too and would fail to destroy the missile.

During tests it took two AA-9 (R-33) AAMs to destroy one Granit missile in flight... each R-33 has a 60kg warhead designed to destroy bombers, so it took 120kgs of HE and fragments to take down one Granit missile.

The Granit flys low and fast... but it flys so it needs its wings and if it gets hit it will fly into the sea eventually... Zircon is flying at great altitude and will dive on its target at near vertical angles... you can fire thousands of shells at it and blow off all its control surfaces... it will just keep falling...

The Timely Warning and Interception with Space-Based Theater Surveillance or TWISTER project that NATO has started is designed primarily to intercept hypersonic missiles. The project aims to field a space-based, early-warning sensor network and an interceptor moving at a velocity of more than Mach 5 at an altitude up to 100 kilometers sometime around 2030.

https://pesco.europa.eu/project/timely-warning-and-interception-with-space-based-theater-surveillance-twister/

This new endo-atmospheric interceptor will address a wide range of threats including, manoeuvring ballistic missiles with intermediate ranges, hypersonic or high-supersonic cruise missiles, hypersonic gliders, anti-ship missiles and more conventional targets such as next-generation fighter aircraft. This Interceptor will integrate existing and future land and naval systems.

The wild US claims and acronym salads are not adding anything to their combat capability. This is no teleshop, it is transparent what they try to achieve and they are not going to fool anybody.

And of course, this counter-hypersonic effort is part of the plan: the more you invest in defensive weapons, the less remains for offensive ones. Simple and effective.

LMFS wrote:The wild US claims and acronym salads are not adding anything to their combat capability. This is no teleshop, it is transparent what they try to achieve and they are not going to fool anybody.

That can be said about Russian weapons as well. Zircon too is a dark horse. Never been tested in combat. Wild claims is not the preserve of U.S only.

Except they were testing scramjet motors in the 1990s and the numbers for Zircon sound impressive but not unattainable...

US with space based sensors... they do know that the Russian MiG-41 will be entering service before 2030 and will be equipped to launch missiles to shoot down satellites... so relying on space based sensors is rather short sighted isn't it?

Making promises of stuff you are working on is easy, but Russia is about to put Zircon into active service... only a 10 year gap before the US has an answer... except that by then their missiles will be faster and longer ranged and even more difficult to deal with, so the US system will struggle with mission creep... and what are the chances it will be cheap... being space based it can't be... and could be targeted by ground based lasers or even space based weapons because the US will be withdrawing from any convention about weapons in space by then too of course...

magnumcromagnon wrote:"Admiral Gorshkov" launched the hypersonic missile 'Zircon' in to the White Sea

They are producing Zirkon like sausages...

flamming_python wrote:So much butthurt here. It's like I'm calling out the Emperor for having no clothes

And yet. It's an Onyx

Nothing new here by the new Russia, private property et al.

Prove me wrong people. Prove me wrong.

This comment has aged SO well!!

"Zircon" is a very important weapon, recently they carried out very important tests for us. In fact, work on it is basically completed, more than eight Machs [speed], the range is long, "Putin said.

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/10284915

dino00 wrote:"Zircon" is a very important weapon, recently they carried out very important tests for us. In fact, work on it is basically completed, more than eight Machs [speed], the range is long, "Putin said.

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/10284915

One of the major roadblocks to developing hypersonic cruise missiles. was that it was impossible to predict and control where a vehicle's boundary layer transitioned from laminar to turbulent flow. This is a large part of why earlier maneuvering RVs were biconic, as opposed to wedge shaped. Increases in supercomputing capability and more wind tunnel/flight testing has allowed for much more accurate modeling of hypersonic flow around vehicles, and enabled more complex and more functional HGVs than before.

The ceramics and composite materials used are still being researched and have their own slate of problems, and the production, machining, and vehicle assembly procedures for them are far from being mature, to say the least.

Older materials and older modeling methods kept older hypersonic vehicles mostly biconic, which have much lower lift to drag ratios and much lower performance as compared to wedge shaped vehicles, which meant they didn't have the performance needed to provide a meaningful increase in capability in order to justify the cost. Newer vehicles are dependent on these developments.

The scramjet remains part of the missile... the purpose of the solid rocket is to accelerate the missile and get it moving and climb to a bit of altitude where its scramjet motor can be started up and accelerate the missile to faster speeds and higher altitudes.

A scramjet is like a turbojet engine in AB, so it will look like a rocket as it accelerates and climbs under scramjet power...

It is essentially like a rocket except it scoops up air as it moves forward while a rocket needs oxygen as part of its fuel supply which makes its fuel four times heavier...

Source: the test program of the Zircon hypersonic missile in 2020 completed successfully

Three successful launches were made from the frigate Admiral Gorshkov, an interlocutor in the military-industrial complex said.

MOSCOW, December 25. / TASS /. The program of flight design tests of the Zircon hypersonic missile in 2020 was completed in full, three successful launches from the Admiral Gorshkov frigate of the Northern Fleet were carried out. This was reported to TASS by a source in the military-industrial complex.

"In the outgoing year, three planned launches were carried out: [two] for sea targets, one for land targets," the agency's interlocutor recalled. According to the source, this demonstrated "amazing accuracy, all the missiles hit the" peg "(this is how the center of the circle depicting a conventional target is called in the slang of missilemen - TASS note)".

The Reutov NPO Mashinostroyenia (part of the Tactical Missile Armament Corporation), where the Zircons were developed and produced, did not comment on this information.

For the first time, the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile was fired from the frigate Admiral Gorshkov in early October 2020. Then the ship launched a rocket from the White Sea, it hit a naval target in the Barents Sea. The highest speed was eight speeds of sound, the flight altitude reached 28 km. Thereafter, the shooting was carried out in November. Then "Zircon" successfully hit a naval target at a distance of 450 km, the missile's flight speed exceeded Mach 8, the Defense Ministry said. On December 11, the Ministry of Defense announced the third launch.

Tests of the Zircon from the Admiral Gorshkov are scheduled to be completed in 2021, then launches from the Severodvinsk nuclear submarine will be carried out.

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/10350505

The SR-71 flew at 25,000m altitude and mach 3.2 on its second test... not.

It will be ready when it is ready... they can make plans and schedule tests and they can change planes and reschedule tests as they please.

Or are you going to tell them how to develop an anti ship missile?

Arrow wrote:There was supposed to be one more test this year. There have not been any tests for a distance of 1000 km yet and they were announced at the end of 2020. In total, they did 7 tests, there were only 3.
For now, Zircon is only 300-400 km range test. Very strange because it is not even half of the declared range by VVP.
They write that there were 3 tests. What about the January 2020 test? was unsuccessful that they do not mention this test.

Source: Zircon hypersonic missile will go to state tests in 2021

According to the agency's interlocutor, in total in the first half of 2021, four Zircon launches are to be performed from the Admiral Gorshkov frigate of the Northern Fleet.
"In 2021, after the completion of the flight design tests, state joint tests will begin. Two more launches will be carried out as part of the flight design tests," the source said.

According to him, “in total, in the first half of 2021, four Zircon launches are to be performed from the Admiral Gorshkov frigate of the Northern Fleet. "From the second half of 2021, flight design tests of the Zircon will begin from the Severodvinsk SF nuclear submarine. At least three launches will be carried out," the source said.

https://tass.ru/armiya-i-opk/10358833

When it enters service, I hope the navy doesn't have to wait many years to get enough stocks of them.