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 Navy’s 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 sniper’s 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 world’s 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 ...
There is a line in a James Bond movie where the villains says something like “ 007 what you doing here? I don’t care about your pathetic little island.” I don’t the Russians are focusing on the royal Navy.
Loose lips sink ships.
“... there will never be another nuclear war if both sides have them.”
Excepting Li’l Kimmy NOKO and the Mad Mullahs ...
It may be proposed, may be in development, but I would lay odds against operational capability.
yes, but they are ramjet...capable of approx mach 2.8. they are not scram jet hypersonic mach 7. Everyone is working on scramjet technology. The US has currently been test flying the X test models.
It would be virtually impossible to guide something going that fast. Even a slight change in direction would make it unstable
China considers the Philippines to be in its territorial waters.
One missile hit equipped with what is probably a smallish conventional warhead, is not gong to sink a 100,000 ton warship. Will it cause millions of dollars of damage? Yes it will. Will it cause the ship to be nonoperational? Yes for a while.
Cool missile!
You would have to shoot it like an unguided torpedo. You could make fractional adjustments but even with a computer, Mach 7 is too fast for terminal adjustments.
You blow up an AA warhead in front of it and it is running into a cloud of shrapnel at about Mach 10. It will be ripped to shreds. The concussion could also send it out of control.
4600 mph is about the velocity of a Rail Gun.
The skin on that missile would be extremely hot and give off a huge infrared signature.
>> The skin on that missile would be extremely hot and give off a huge infrared signature. <<
Yes, it would. Frictional heating.
That missile closes at over 200 yards in less than 1/10th second. It would smash into the ship and probably detonate.
It’s still in the ballpark for pre-detonating the warhead before contact.
Though I was thinking the missile would count on kinetic damage and not a warhead. I was just thinking of nudging an airfoil-shape, which would cause a drastic change in it’s trajectory.
But I see similar ones in use now do have significant warheads.
Of course ‘in the ballpark’ is just a starting point!
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