I understand it so perfectly. The Kinzhal, is also advertised as a hypersonic weapon and is an ordinary rocket missile like Iskander.
The Kinzhal and in its ground launched version, the Iskander, certainly are conventional rocket powered missiles, but unlike western equivalents like Honest John II etc, the Iskander is powered all the way to its target and has thrust vectoring rocket propulsion and sensors on board that detect interceptors that allows the missile to fly to a target like an aircraft unlike an artillery shell.
A normal ballistic weapon has a predictable path because it is launched accelerates to top speed and then glides most of the way towards the target... it does not manouver because manouvering bleeds away speed and makes it easier to shoot down... lots of heavy manouvering and it might not reach its target... plus it is generally a warhead and perhaps a terminal guidance system that detects the missiles position via GPS or INS or both and hits a coordinate or it has a radar or camera to find a target and manouver to hit it in the last phase of flight.
The Iskander and Kinzhal are not like that... their rocket motor burns all the way to the target area and they don't follow a ballistic glide path, they fly to the target like an aircraft, and they are fitted with sensors and jammers and decoys so if it detects a Patriot air defence system it will manouver to keep its distance while approaching its target... if the Patriot system is the target then it will use jammers and releasable decoys and also manouver to make if very difficult for the patriot battery to hit it... in other words it does not just manouver to hit the target properly, it actively tries to avoid approaching threats that it detects with onboard sensors...
That is what makes it different to previous weapons.
Their large Anti ship missiles have had the same capacity for decades, in addition to their pack attack or swarm attack ability for hard targets like large ships that need to be hit multiple times to ensure they sink.
Their Zircon missile just makes it all easier because four fifths of the bulk of the fuel and air a rocket carries can be removed and scooped up on the way to the target by the scramjet powered missile, and in fact it can be throttled up or down as required to conserve fuel or add energy for manouvering too.
Even in the 1990s Germany and France were working on a new missile design that used combined rocket ramjet propulsion... it was to be a tactical missile for fighters to carry... about 800kg in weight, mach 2 flight speed and 90km range... it was called ANS or something... and they couldn't decide so it didn't go anywhere...
Sound familiar?
The Kh-31 of the 1980s was a 600kg mach 3 missile with a 120km flight range for tactical aircraft for anti radiation use and for anti ship use... latest models have double that range, and they are working on scramjet powered models with three times higher speed and presumably double or triple the range.
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Big_Gazza
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