Posted on 03/26/2017 6:53:13 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
Russia has developed an unstoppable hypersonic missile capable of destroying the Royal Navys most sophisticated warships, the Sunday People can reveal.
Kremlin military chiefs claim they have built an anti-ship cruise missile capable of travelling at between five and six times the speed of sound - 3,800 mph to 4,600mph.
Now experts fear the missile, called the Zircon, could sink the Royal Navy s two new £6bn state-of-the air aircraft carriers in a single strike.
The missile flies more than twice the speed of a snipers bullet and is almost impossible to stop.
The cruise missile is powered by a scramjet - an air-breathing jet engine that can reach incredible speeds.
A swarm attack involving a dozen missiles against the worlds most modern warships would be devastating, experts believe.
The Zircon missile is believed to have a range of up to 500 miles and can be fitted with a series of warheads from high explosive to nuclear.
It can be fired from land, sea and submarines and could prove to be the most important and deadly weapon of the 21st century.
(Excerpt) Read more at mirror.co.uk ...
The Russians are our natural allies
“In peacetime you dont normally shoot cruise missiles at other country ships in international waters.”
The reason we were (actually 25 or less) miles off the coast of Crimea was intimidation. Is that intimidation still valid if the ship has missiles trained on it that are mere seconds away? Take into account that Russia considers Crimea its coast, not Ukraine’s like we do.
Plus China already considers much of the South China sea their territorial waters. They don’t recognize our international waters or right of navigation. We played chicken when we sailed 12 miles off the coast of their artificial island. They backed down. Someday they may not.
Just saying, the world aint that peaceful, doesn’t share “our” territorial views and is gonna become less so.
This is allegedly the work of one of them
Once the launch foilies fall alway, time to deploy countermeasures against the zircon encrusted tweezers.
Wow. If that happened when it was submerged, the shockwave must’ve been tremendous. Think what it must have been like to be on that vessel when that hit. Wow.
We have airborne lasers..
Disturbing. Mach 7 is almost 1.5 miles per second. Hopefully Airborne Early Warning aircraft would detect these. Otherwise, air defense ships would detect them 25 to 30 miles out. Thats 11 to 15 seconds to detect and destroy them.
http://www.navyrecognition.com/index.php/focus-analysis/naval-technology/3810-analysis-3k22-and-3m22-zircon-the-next-generation-hypersonic-missile-of-the-russian-navy.html
I remember reading that Khrushchev told Kennedy that they were churning out hydrogen tipped ICBM’s like sausages. They didn’t have one operational per a satellite photo.
It would hardly need a warhead at those speeds. Simply put a tungsten nose-cone on it. The kinetic energy alone would do the job.
Not sure about the aerodynamics at low altitudes. I would think anything flying at high-Mach would be coming in from high-altitude.
There’s one flaw in your strategy. What if this weapon (or any other anti-ship missile) is the first shot of the war? A sucker-punch. We only have... what?... 11 carriers. In a pinch we might be able to deploy 8 of them (globally). Take 1 out in the opening salvo and you’ve done a lot of damage.
The U.K. will be right on it as soon as they address their muzlim issue. Right away, no worries...and there are a lot of real men left there to help out.
Point taken. Yet anything that moves in bulk commerce moves on the oceans. The major day-to-day purpose for the USN is to act as a guarantor, a beat-cop. Any major nation taking such a shot is upsetting a lot of apple carts.
Iraq basically got away (for a time) with shooting at the "Stark". But Iran provoked a major response when it floated mines in the Persian Gulf.
The Kursk had it’s bow removed after recovery. The Russians claimed a collision with a NATO boat (US or Brit). Some conspiracy-minded analyst theorized that it took a MK-48 torpedo hit right in the control room.
Considering they were practicing a missile drill at the time against a Russian surface unit, I’ll stick with the likelihood of an internal explosion.
The story does sound like a bunch of vaporware!
“What about American ships?”
This is “The UK Mirror.” In Journalism 101 you are taught to personalize every bad event. Thus, sixty-five million years ago in Mexico the local paper’s headline would read, “Giant asteroid ruins dinosaur birthday party.”
If the Russians were serious about sinking a carrier, then they would use a nuclear warhead, not conventional ... and that would take out a carrier.
In fact, any skipper, worth the name, would assume that in such a situation that any missiles coming against his ship would be nuclear and act accordingly.
There is no missile design to inflict damage below the waterline. LOL.
There is no real defense against a nuclear warhead blowing up within a few hundred yards of a ship. That said there will never be another nuclear war if both sides have them. The last 70 years have proven that. Hell, we didn’t nuke Korea or Vietnam and there wasn’t threat of retaliation.
You dont take out the missile you go after the delivery system before it launches.
or
You mess with its guidance system.
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