Ukraine says Russia’s `uninterceptable` missile has many technical errors

(Dan Tri) – Ukraine announced that it had dissected fragments of Russia’s Zircon hypersonic missile and said that the weapon model that Moscow described as `uninterceptable` had many technical errors.

A piece of debris that Ukraine claims belongs to Russia’s Zircon hypersonic missile (Photo: UP).

Andrii Kulchytskyi, Head of the Military Research Laboratory of the Kiev Forensic Scientific Research Institute, told Ukrainian television that the Zircon missiles Russia used to attack Kiev on February 7 and 25

`This missile cannot perform its combat mission. All descriptions (from the Russian side) about the missile’s power are just words. In fact, this missile is still a long way from being qualified.`

According to Mr. Kulchytskyi, Zircon’s warhead appears to contain no more than 40kg of explosives.

`We are still dissecting this missile to determine what is inside. But its warhead is very small, not comparable to missiles like Kh-101 and Kh-22,` he said,

Russia has not commented on the information provided by Ukraine.

Previously, the Ukrainian Air Force Command announced that the country shot down two Russian missiles that attacked Kiev on March 25.

The Militarnyi site, the Ukrainian military’s web portal, later said the missiles flew the 580km distance to Kiev within 3 minutes, which indicates a hypersonic flight speed of 11,600km/h (fast

Militarnyi identified this as a Zircon missile based on the characters engraved on the body of the fragment.

According to observers, the numerical engravings on that fragment match those found during the Russian attack on Kiev in February, when Zircon was also used.

Although Ukraine announced that it had shot down the Russian missile on March 25, falling fragments of this weapon collapsed a number of Kiev buildings, images at the scene showed.

Russia has not commented on the information that Ukraine shot down Zircon, but has repeatedly stated that this missile can bypass current air defense systems.

Zircon has a range of 1,000km and can move at 9 times the speed of sound.

In addition, Russia said Zircon is capable of attacking large and fortified targets, requiring the missile to have a large warhead.

In a 2018 speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin mentioned Zircon as one of the strategic systems that can defeat enemy missile defense systems and ensure Russia’s ability to respond.