Mike Baruah, North America Corespondent.
The United States has been warning of Russia’s deployment of the ‘Kinzhal’ hypersonic missile in Ukraine, the first time it has been employed in combat. According to the Associated Press, the US Navy, which has lagged behind Russia in developing hypersonic weapons, plans to deploy its first on a warship in early 2023.
The United States is in a race with Russia and China to develop these weapons, which travel eight times faster than sound and are difficult to shoot down due to their flexibility. The US-developed weapon would launch like a ballistic missile and release a hypersonic glide vehicle before striking the target.
Bath Iron Works, a General Dynamics subsidiary, is said to have started engineering and design work on the modifications needed to deploy the weapons system aboard three Zumwalt-class destroyers in Maine. Work on the missiles is expected to begin in October 2023 at an undisclosed shipyard, according to the US Navy.
The three stealthy Zumwalt-class destroyers that will be outfitted with the new weapons will have plenty of capacity to accommodate them thanks to a design defect that benefits the Navy.
The ships were built around a gun system that could reach targets up to 90 miles away with GPS-guided, rocket-boosted bullets. Because the bullets were too expensive, the Navy scrapped the system, leaving each ship with a useless loading system and a pair of 155-mm cannons hidden under angular turrets.
According to Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute, the retrofitting of all three ships will cost more than $1 billion but will provide the Navy a new capability for the tech-laden, electric-drive ships that have already cost the Navy $23.5 billion.
According to the Navy, the weapons will be deployed on destroyers by 2025 and Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines by 2028. Russia claims to have ballistic missiles capable of launching hypersonic glide vehicles and hypersonic cruise missiles.
It is equipped with the most modern and deadliest hypersonic missiles, such as the Avangard, Tsirkon, and Kinzhal. The DF-17 is also used by China to transport its hypersonic glide vehicle. Although both of the US’s enemies have hypersonic weapons, the US is lagging behind in this important military technology.
Hypersonic weapons are those that move at speeds greater than Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. This equates to almost 3,800 miles per hour (6,100 kph). Intercontinental ballistic missiles are far more powerful than hypersonic missiles, but they follow a predefined path that makes them interceptible.
Due to their agility, which makes their movement unexpected and gives little time to respond, existing missile defence systems in the United States, such as the Navy’s Aegis, would struggle to intercept such objects.
They are designed to be able to make rapid and unexpected changes throughout their flight routes, as opposed to standard ballistic missile trajectories, which follow a predetermined trajectory. They are particularly difficult to identify and track, especially with sensors built for traditional ballistic missiles, due to their mobility, fast speed, and general flight profile, as EurAsian Times previously reported.
