Putin deploys warship armed with hypersonic missiles to the Atlantic

Putin boasted that the ship was carrying Zircon hypersonic missiles, long-range weapons that travel more than five times the speed of sound and are harder to detect and intercept.

Putin said, according to TASS: “I am sure that such powerful weapons will reliably protect Russia from potential external threats and will help ensure the national interests of our country.”

The dreaded Zirkon is a missile with terrifying characteristics…

The technological novelty introduced by this missile is its ability to exceed up to nine times the speed of sound. That is to say, this projectile would be able to strike down a target in a very short period of time.

According to Russian propaganda, Zirkon could reach between 6,000 and 10,000 kilometers/hour (3,800-6,900 miles/hour).

That extreme speed makes Western military circles speculate that Zirkon could elude missile defense systems.

The detailed Wikipedia entry on this missile states that "air pressure in front of it forms a cloud of plasma as it moves, absorbing radio waves and making it virtually invisible to active radar systems."

The Russians claim that a Zirkon missile can hit a target from 10,000 kilometers (6,213 miles) away almost instantly.

According to The New York Times, Russia claimed in March that it had demolished an arms depot in Ukraine with a Tsirkon missile.

The Russian armed forces indicated that the Zirkon missile is capable of striking both land and sea targets.

According to the official Tass agency, "The Reutov-based Research and Production Association is serially producing Zirkon hypersonic missiles. The defense firm is working to extend the missile's operational range."

Russia and China have advanced in the investigation of this type of hypersonic weapons. According to The New York Times, "the Pentagon has requested $3.8 billion for hypersonic research in fiscal year 2022."

In fact, Reuters reported in July 2022 that two Lockheed Martin Corp hypersonic missile tests had been successfully conducted.

But, also according to Reuters, in parallel to the experimentation with hypersonic missiles, the US military industry is rapidly investigating systems to detect and deactivate these projectiles in case the enemy launches them.

A shield against hypersonic missiles is urgent if they can, in fact, circumvent current defense systems as it is thought by Western military circles.

The arms race that went on during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union and the United States pointed their missiles at each other, seems to have returned.