The Sun
VLADIMIR Putin’s hypersonic missiles are ready for mass production after every nuke capable of wiping out a US city hit ‘bullseye’ during war games testing.
The weapon, capable of flying at 6,100mph, has now been fired a total of four times from the Admiral Gorshkov frigate in the Arctic.
Moscow confirmed it has now completed initial tests of the Russian President’s deadly new Zircon hypersonic missile and it will go into service next year, according to reports.
A British RC-135W spy aircraft was circling the skies where the Gorskhov this week sailed off the Kola Peninsula, reported the Barents Observer.
It was the second time in a week that a British reconnaissance plane had buzzed an area of the Barents Sea to snoop on Russian conducted missile tests, said the report.
The Gorshkov had been expected to fire the Zircon this week, but the defence ministry only specifically confirmed supersonic Oniks missile launches from the frigate.
The missiles are said to have hit a target off Novaya Zemlya, where a large area of water was declared “forbidden to navigate for all vessels” on both the Barents Sea and Kara Sea sides of the Arctic archipelago.
Despite this, a military source told Russian state news agency TASS: “Flight trials (of the Zircon) from Admiral Gorshkov have been completed successfully.
“A total of four launches have been made. All missiles hit the ‘bullseye’.”
“Trials of the Zircon missile are planned to be finished in 2021, while serial production of the new weapon is expected to commence in 2022,” reported TASS.
Tests of the Mach 8 missile from a submarine are due soon.
Putin has previously described the Ziron as “truly unparalleled… in the world”.
The first Zircon test launch of the missile from the Gorshkov was staged in early October – and seen as a 68th birthday present for Putin.
More test launches followed in November and December.
A radiation leak during a military accident which killed two and wounded six in 2019 was seen as involving a testing on the missile.
Radiation levels temporarily soared 20 times above the normal level in Severodvinsk, a city lying some 18 miles from the weapons testing site at Nyonoksa (Nenoksa), according to Greenpeace citing the Russian Emergencies Ministry.
It comes as Putin tightens his grip on the Arctic to gain control of territory across 11 time zones.
A subdivision of Sukhoi Su-34 bombers is to be transferred to the Northern Fleet in the near future for a first-ever Arctic deployment.
And the newest SU-35s are to imminently undergo combat training in the most extreme conditions.
Dmitry Kiselyov, presenter of Russia’s main weekly TV news show Vesti Nedeli, showed on screen a map of the US identifying targets he claimed the Kremlin would want to hit in a nuclear war.
Kiselyov, seen as a top Putin propagandist, said the Zircon missile could hit the targets in less than five minutes.
Putin has claimed that the West was seeking to steal secrets relating to Zircon and other state-of-the-art Russian weapons such as the Avangard.
