Admiral Gorshkov
The Russian Navy’s Admiral Gorshkov frigate, first of the class, will launch a Zircon hypersonic missile during live-fire drills in late 2019, the Russian state media says. This will be a first launch of Zircon from a naval carrier. Previously, Zircon missiles had been fired from stands only.
According to various sources, Zircon has a speed between Mach 6 and Mach 9 and is capable of striking both naval and land targets. According to President Vladimir Putin’s recent address, the weapon has effective range in excess of 1,000km.
Admiral Gorshkov (Project 22350) became the first large warship to be designed and built after the collapse of the USSR. Furthermore, the Russian military is already preparing plans to obtain modernized warships of this class – Project 22350M.
“The Northern design bureau has completed designing frigates of Project 22350M and is now developing working design documentation for these vessels in line with the customer’s tactical and technical order,” a source told state news agency TASS.
Project 22350M frigates be capable of carrying up to 48 cruise missiles each and will have a displacement of 7,000t. Both Kalibr cruise missiles and Zircon hypersonic missiles will be a part of its armament.
That’s nothing, the Zumwalt is going on its first mission using its own engines.
Yes, this is a glaring example of American ineptitude when it comes to designing new weapons, the destroyer costs at least 4.5 billion without R&D expenses factored, it is equipped with obsolete antiship, ASW, and SAM weaponry, and it has its famous Advanced Gun System that are useless since the designated rounds for the gun were in excess of 800,000 per round, the gun having a capacity of over 900 rounds. Zumwalt potentially could have carried close to on billion worth of 6 inch rounds on board per ship. All American weapons suffer from excessive costs with little practical value attributed to them in view of existing threats.
Zircon deployment from Russian frigates sea going corvettes, and submarines would be a nightmare for the NATO navy since they are having difficult time with long range supersonic missiles, swarms of hypersonic missiles would be the last nail in the coffin getting NATO’s navy ready for burial.
Listening to Notorious B.I.G. Ready to Die at work. Let the chips fall where they may. I only want to live long enough to see the Empire meets its match. Nothing but love. Tough love.
Russia is so smart! Making these weapons that can be launched from small ships! These ships can be built fast and are of low cost can easily destroy large carriers! Can launch all these weapons from older (as well as new) aircraft! This tells us Russia focussed more on its weapon systems rather than its launchers (ships and aircraft). Of course they brought in new aircraft but they are secondary to the weapon system that does the damage and poses the real threat! 1990 until now! (Bread lines until now) what a remarkable recovery! In reality it was 2001 until now (ever since Putin came to power). Absolutely amazing!