Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said in an interview with Rossiya 1 yesterday that production of the Tsirkon hypersonic missile will begin this year. “We are starting serial production of the Tsirkon missile. In fact, we have put it (the missile) into service, and it will be documented as early as this year, let’s call it that,” he said, reported TASS.
Shoigu also reported that production of the Kinzhal hypersonic missile is continuing.
The Navy Recognition website noted on July 29, 2022, that “According to information published by TASS on July 29, 2022, the advanced Tsirkon hypersonic missile designed for Navy surface ships is set to enter service in September 2022.… Being twice as heavy and almost eleven times as fast as Tomahawk, the Zircon [Tsirkon] has more than 242 times the on-cruise kinetic energy of a Tomahawk missile (~9 gigajoules, or equal to 2,150 kg TNT explosive energy). Its 8-9 mach speed means that it cannot be intercepted by existing missile defense systems and its precision makes it lethal to large targets such as an aircraft carrier.”
Meanwhile, the Poles are going berserk over the deployment of three MiG-31’s armed with Kinzhals in Kaliningrad. “As a nation on the eastern flank of NATO, we are fully aware of the threat, our actions in accordance with consultations with allies and NATO headquarters will be adequate to the actions that Russia is taking,” Wojciech Skurkiewicz, a spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Defense, told the Polish press agency PAP, reported RT (in Russian).
According to him, in the event of a threat, Article 5 of the NATO Charter with the formula “one for all and all for one” will be activated.
