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Would it be possible for Cirkon to fly 9M at a low altitude?
Even if it could only manage mach 5 at low altitude it would be unstoppable... no aircraft or missile could fly for very long at that speed at that altitude.
The Russians say they have materials that can withstand 3000 degrees but a dense atmosphere will significantly reduce the range of the missile.
Having a mix of high and low flying threats further complicated the problem of defence...
to GarryB: I doubt that such a sign would deter this geniuses in Washington from trying it.
The people really in control of the US military are not stupid... all their decisions make sense and are perfectly logical... the problem is when you try to map what they say with what they do and is does not make sense... peace and democracy, truth and justice, rights of workers and children, the safety of children in buses or schools and hospitals in Iraq and Syria and Kosovo...
Freedom fighters and dissidents protecting peoples rights get nobel peace prizes... but only if they are activists against China or Russia or Myanmar or North Korea... oil outside of Americas control needs to be brought under US control so Iraq and Syria and Venezuela must be invaded and puppet states imposed, but the Saudi Dictatorship can continue to stone gays to death and ban women from being alone in public without a male relative to accompany them... they care so much about their virtue they will stone to death anyone that does not comply with their rules.
The American leadership... I don't mean trump... I mean the ones with the power.... they are basically
.to Arrow: the whole point of the development of hypersonic weapons is to fly shocking fast at low heights. The speed alone isn´t the big thing about them. Ballistic missiles exist for decades, but for most of the way they fly very high. Until now low-flying cruise (anti-ship) missiles were limited to Mach 2,5 or 3 or sometimes 4 for a few hundred kilometres. The hypersonic missiles are the cure for that problem.
Not strictly true... previously hypersonic weapons were ballistic.... like a mortar bomb... fired into the air and follow a very predictable path to impact... though their might be some minor changes in trajectory so it hits a point target at the end of its flight but totally predicable... once you know its speed by tracking a few points on its trajectory you can plot its flight path with pretty good accuracy and send an interceptor missile ahead on that path to shoot it down... the interceptor does not need to be moving at anything like the speed the target is moving at... just like a tennis racket doesn't need to be moving as fast as the tennis ball it intercepts during a game of tennis.
These hypersonic weapons are not ballistic like a shot fired from a gun... they are powered all the way like cruise missiles or airplanes so they can and will change trajectory and direction and even speed... as they travel they will get lighter as they burn fuel so they will be able to get faster and faster as they approach their target... a rocket like a Scud burns all its fuel on launch and then it just continues up and loses momentum and then falls back down in the direction of the target... a Zircon flys in level flight and can steer and manouver... it has sensors on board and will detect enemy air defence systems and fly around them... when you are covering almost 3km per second a ten degree turn and two seconds later you could be a dozen kms to the left or right of where you would have been if you had not changed course... now that Patriot battery that was tracking you notices the instant you turn but will take a few seconds to see how far you turn and will take a few more seconds to calculate your new projected position and in that time the missile it launched is now heading to where you were going so it needs a course correction to the new place... but in the 5 seconds total that took to detect the shift in trajectory and to calculate how far you turned and to project a new intercept point and pass that new interception point to the intercepting missile... that is 5 seconds... the target missile might have shifted course by 5-10km but it has already moved 15km closer to its target so the interception point has moved back 15km and to the left or right 5-10km... and what if it turns again?
This is not a ballistic missile... it is powered... so minor turns of 5-20 degrees wont slow it down very much at all because it is running its jet engine continuously... when it detects it is being tracked by a Patriot battery it can turn 5 degrees left or right... climb a little... turn 5-10 degrees the other way... increase throttle a bit to speed up... climb above the effective ceiling of Patriot... its intercept range against ballistic targets is something like 15-20km because of their steep trajectory so keeping more than 30km from any Patriot battery radar and it might not have to manouver at all....
well remove those 2-3 crew and you got... drone
With a drone they could send in the CIA to EMP zap it and claim it sailed into US waters so they boarded it for safety reasons...
In case of ship based Zircon, kinetic energy delivered is function of fuel volume it carries. You cannot have long range, heavy warhead, , high speed and and tiny missile.
At least not in my understanding of physics.
The laws of physics are the limits but using different propulsion methods also makes the impossible possible...
For a while supersonic flight was literally impossible because propellers couldn't operate at such speeds so no amount of engine power could get a missile supersonic. Rockets burn out too fast so give high speed but short range. Then came jet engines which gave more speed but early ones were thirsty so range was still not great... but turbofans greatly improved flight range by being more efficient with fuel.
To get speed back however they went to turbojets which were not so efficient as they needed to operate in AB mode which rapidly burned fuel to get the supersonic speed.
Then they went to ramjet which is a simple jet engine that is efficient at supersonic speeds, so the ramjet restored the capacity for high speed without burning a lot of fuel like a turbojet in AB.
Now we have scramjets which opens up much higher speed potential with an engine that is relatively fuel efficient... more so than any rocket to turbojet...
the funny thing is here - 1,300kms flying 3km/s you need... 7,5 mins to meet US admiral on his fraternal-bed-of-honor command post
Zircon is for sinking US carriers, but 7.5 minutes would be perfectly acceptable for hitting targets in Washington or ABM bases in Alaska or Eastern Europe.
Ironically for such targets a nuke warhead would be the payload of choice and as the nuke warhead is likely 1/3rd or less the weight of the conventional warhead the nuke armed Zircon might be faster and longer ranged than the conventionally armed models...
do you suggest there will be 2 coexisting UKSKs on one ship like 22350?
No... I am expecting that the larger UKSK-M... if it exists... will likely be fitted as standard on new build and upgraded ships and subs larger than Destroyer size... which will also allow them to carry S-500 SAMs and other larger more potent weapons. For smaller vessels the existing UKSK weapons will be potent enough... in fact Poliment-Redut missiles of the small, medium and large size that are adapted to fit in packs in the UKSK-M launchers could be adapted to fit in the smaller vessels UKSK launchers too so existing small ships could have their extra SAM launch bins replaced with extra UKSK launch tubes... or the smaller vessels could simply keep their existing weapon arrangements...
would you suggest anybody can just take down US unmanned shuttle, navigation sat or B-21 in unmanned mode?
First things first Skif does exist. For reason I guess.
What I am saying is that artificial Chinese islands in the South China sea is seriously pissing off many countries inside and outside the region... including the US and Australia et al.
Imagine the serious butthurt from the US if Russia started construction of islands off their coast... say 500km off their coast... the salty tears...
IMHO most efficient way is not to just drop 'n' forget but constantly pick up, move, drop missile containers. Imagine logistic company moving containers round country Smile so US never knows where they actually are Of course combiners are in 24/7 discrete surveillance by your drones.
US has a history of robbing sea graves.... check out CIA raising a Golf class sub last century. Things dropped in international waters will get tracked down and recovered... whether it is a sub or a missile or anything like an expendable sonobuoy...
B-21, X-37 are unmanned, would you suggest anybody can just take them? ,
Like that super secret US stealth drone in Iran.... yes... if they could... unmanned things sitting in international waters are fair game...
Solution: put Skiff on the seabed around arctic islands of Russia: Novaja Semlja, Wrangel and so on.
Agree. Somewhere where you can stand guard.
In warfare a minefield is dangerous... but a minefield covered by machine gun fire, sniper fire, and ATGMs is much much more deadly than an unprotected minefield...
