War in Ukraine: hypersonic missiles, a psychological and strategic effect
Unexploded hypersonic Russian missile, in Kramatorsk on March 9, according to Ukrainian sources.
REUTERS - NATIONAL GUARD OF UKRAINE
Text by: RFI Follow
3 mins
Once again this Sunday morning, Russia announces that it has used hypersonic missiles.
Yesterday Saturday, the Russian authorities announced that they had destroyed an underground weapons warehouse in western Ukraine.
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"A large reserve of fuel was destroyed by Kalibr
cruise missiles
fired from the Caspian Sea, as well as by hypersonic ballistic missiles fired by the
Kinjal
aeronautical system from the airspace of Crimea", declared this Sunday the ministry of La Défense in a press release taken up by Agence France presse.
The strike occurred in the Mykolaiv region, on an unspecified date and according to the ministry, the destroyed target was "the main source of fuel supply for Ukrainian armored vehicles".
Yesterday Saturday, Moscow announced that it had fired
Kinjal
missiles in Ukraine the day before.
If this shot were proven, it would be the first known use in real combat conditions of this system tested for the first time in 2018.
The Ukrainian authorities have neither confirmed nor denied this information.
All of our daily, live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
© FMM Graphic Studio
A feared weapon
The Kinjal
("dagger" in Russian)
hypersonic ballistic missiles and those of
Zircon
cruisers belong to a family of new weapons developed by Russia and which its president, Vladimir Putin, describes as "invincible" because they are supposed to be able to evade defense systems. opponents.
It was in December 2021 that President Putin announced that Russia had successfully launched a
Zircon missile,
with a range of 1,000 kilometers.
This weapon must equip the surface ships and submarines of the Russian fleet, explained
Franck Alexandre
in a
Defense column last January.
The
Kinjal
missile can fly at nearly 12,000 kilometers per hour and would have a range of 2,000 to 3,000 kilometers.
These machines, which are part of the Russian strategic weapons, can be equipped with either a conventional warhead or a nuclear warhead, which has the effect of making it difficult to replicate.
For General Dominique Trinquand, former head of the French military mission to the UN, joined by
Pauline Guillou
, of the international service, if these weapons do not offer a real strategic advantage for the Russians, they have on the other hand a psychological effect immediate.
“
Using hypersonic missiles and saying so, (shows) on the part of Russia, (that they) seek psychologically to show that they dominate the subject and that they are above the lot.
But in fact it is to compensate for the deficiencies that we note today in the Russian army.
It is a new type of weapon but which does not fundamentally revolutionize the war currently in Ukraine. It is therefore not a revolution, it is simply a display with very modern missiles of course, but in limited numbers and which will not change the course of the war.
Where it brings a change is that probably Western armaments are not able to counter these hypersonic missiles, this until proven otherwise of course.
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Ukraine
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Defense