Ukraine says Russia’s unstoppable hypersonic missiles had another bad night

A Russian warship launches a Zircon missile in July 2021.

The Ukrainian military said it destroyed nearly all of the hypersonic missiles Russia launched as part of a massive bombardment over the weekend.

Ukraine said that Russia fired eight Kh-47M2 Kinzhal missiles and one 3M22 Zirkon missile as part of a barrage that started on Saturday night and consisted of 210 missiles and drones of various types.

Kyiv’s air force said its defenders shot down over 140 munitions that were part of the attack, including seven of the Kinzhals and the lone Zirkon.

The purported success of Ukraine’s air defenses during the engagement marks the latest blow to the reputation of Russian hypersonic weapons, which Moscow has touted as highly advanced systems that are basically unstoppable. Kyiv has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to shoot them down.

The Kinzhal (Russian for “dagger”) is an advanced air-launched ballistic missile based on the ground-launched Iskander that Moscow claims is a hypersonic weapon. This is misleading because even though it can reach hypersonic speeds — at least five times the speed of sound — and features a certain amount of maneuverability, it lacks crucial characteristics that allow it to be classified as such.

A Russian warplane carrying a Kinzhal missile underneath it.

The Kinzhal, which Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed in 2018, can carry a conventional explosive payload said to weigh some 1,000 pounds, but it is also a nuclear-capable weapon.

The Zircon, sometimes spelled Tsirkon, is a ship-launched missile that Russian officials claim can travel at speeds of nearly 7,000 mph. It has a reported range of over 600 miles and entered service with Moscow’s military last year. The weapon has seen significantly less combat than the Kinzhal. Its first use in Ukraine, which was determined from fragments, was in February.

While the Kinzhal missile can be launched from Russian aircraft like the MiG-31 and bombers, the Zircon has so far been limited to Russian Navy Admiral Gorshkov-class frigates. Russia has tested the weapon on submarines, though, and it is looking into other platforms. There don’t appear to be any launch platforms in the Black Sea, but there are some other potential options. B-17 wasn’t able to independently verify Ukraine’s claims that the weapon was used.

Ukraine has several air-defense systems that it says are capable of taking down Russia’s hypersonic missiles, including the French/Italian-made SAMP-T and American-made MIM-104 Patriot battery. Kyiv has repeatedly asked its Western backers for more of these systems to defend the country from attacks like the one over the weekend.

Analysts have said that Ukraine’s ability to shoot down Russia’s advanced weapons, including the self-described hypersonic missiles, could provide both Kyiv and NATO with significant intelligence. These are top systems among a batch of weapons that are sometimes described as Putin’s “super weapons.”

While Russia’s hypersonic missiles have failed thus far to live up to the Kremlin’s hype of being unstoppable, the Ukrainian interception rates for these weapons are still relatively low compared to other munitions like drones and more traditional cruise missiles, highlighting the challenge.

People look at the remains of a downed Russian Zircon missile after it struck a residential building in Kyiv over the weekend.

Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi revealed in August that Russia had launched 111 Kinzhal missiles since the start of the war in February 2022 and that Kyiv had managed to shoot down 28 of them — an interception rate of just 25%.

Syrskyi said Russia had only used the Zircon missile six times. Two of the munitions were shot down, while the other four struck civilian targets, according to Ukrainian media. The statistics on intercepts for these missiles appear higher now, but only slightly.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research institute, notes that data on hypersonic missile interception rates is scarce.

“Ukraine claims a 25% interception rate for hypersonic Kinzhal and Zircon missiles, but Ukrainian sources also indicate such interceptions require salvo firing all 32 launchers in a US-style Patriot battery to have any chance to shoot down a single hypersonic missile,” the institute wrote in a September report.

It’s unclear how common that situation might be, but the reported demands indicate that these attacks put tremendous stress on Ukraine’s already strained air defenses, potentially exhausting entire batteries with no guarantee of success. It further highlights the importance of air defenses. Lockheed Martin, which makes the Patriot, recently announced that it is preparing to again dramatically boost PAC-3 interceptor production amid growing demand.