Russian Zircon Hypersonic Anti-Ship Missile is ready now???

via Naval News Instagram Page.

RUSSIA has confirmed its hypersonic missle that can destroy the warships in a single strike are ready "as of today". Vladimir Putin's defence boss reportedly confirmed the weapons, which can travel up to six times the speed of sound at 4,600 mph and reportedly more than 600 miles, were ready for war.

The lethal Zircon missile can travel at speeds of Mach 5–Mach 6 (3,806–4,567 mph; 6,125–7,350 km/h; 1,701.5–2,041.7 m/s). Such high speeds have led to concerns that it could penetrate existing naval defense systems; the Royal Navy's Sea Ceptor surface-to-air missile is only capable of intercepting targets flying up to Mach 3.  In April 2017, it was revealed that the Zircon had reached a speed of Mach 8 (6,090 mph; 9,800 km/h; 2,722.3 m/s) during a test.

Moscow tested the weapon back in June and the Zircon – also known as Tsirkon – has been in development for over 20 years.

Don't have time and I'm too tired to check tonight but this can't be true!  If it is then we need new anti-missile defense systems like yesterday.

We saw what happened when the kinetic energy of a destroyed anti-ship missile struck a British ship and they were subsonic.  The speed alone of this type missile will mean that a warhead is irrelevant.  Energy transfer alone will totally wreck the thing.

What I don't know is how a battleship would fare against this type of weapon.  The Iowa Class Battleships were designed to withstand the firepower of 18in guns of the Japanese battlewagons so perhaps (and I'm just throwing this out there...I have no idea just spitballing) they could handle the threat.

If we can't do that then I've heard/read don't remember the idea of using supertankers loaded with sand to act as missile magnets and have them emit the way that aircraft carriers do to protect them.

Doesn't matter though.  We need to find out if this is real first.  Once that's confirmed then we can start on solving this problem.

Sidenote.  How did the Russians get the lead on us in this field?  I thought we were ahead of everyone in the field of hypersonics, rail guns and laser warfare!