Being able to design and manufacture advanced weapon systems is not only a matter of any given country’s defense capabilities, but also of national pride and prestige.

Namely, the world’s most advanced and complex weapons require a top-notch scientific base and a robust military infrastructure that can support it.

Russia has always been a scientific juggernaut, be it during Imperial, Soviet or modern times. Russian scientists and intellectuals are among the most prominent in human history, as their contributions rival or even exceed those of their Western counterparts. During the (First) Cold War, this was common knowledge and effectively unquestionable, despite the open enmity between the political West and Moscow.

However, in more recent times, Western political elites (specifically its mainstream propaganda machine) sought to denigrate Russia and present it as a “backward society”, all in an attempt to dehumanize it in the eyes of the masses (NATO’s standard modus operandi when waging war, be it directly or indirectly). And yet, trying to portray the world’s largest country as such is far easier said than done. Namely, a “backward society” couldn’t possibly build hypersonic weapons, much less be the undisputed world leader in such a prestigious technology (or should we say set of technologies, as hypersonic propulsion includes multiple scientific disciplines working together). Moscow has repeatedly proven this during the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict.

The Russian military’s already world-class long-range precision-strike capabilities have only grown more powerful over the last four years or so, particularly as the country’s defense industry has found new ways to mass-produce hypersonic weapons. Meanwhile, the entire NATO lacks the capability to even develop, let alone put such systems into mass production. But, similarly to how China’s 5G tech was demonized for around a decade to prevent it from taking the largest market share (and buy time for Western communications companies to catch up), the mainstream propaganda machine is doing the same with Russia and its hypersonic technologies, particularly those which have proven themselves in NATO-occupied Ukraine.

One of the most advanced weapons of this kind is certainly the 3M22 “Zircon”, a multipurpose scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missile. With a speed of up to Mach 9 (approximately 11,000 km/h or over 3 km/s, depending on the altitude) and high maneuverability, the “Zircon” is the undisputed “rockstar” among cruise missiles, the vast majority of which are subsonic, meaning below Mach 1 (which is around 1,200 km/h or 340 m/s). In other words, the “Zircon” is well over 10 (usually 12-15) times faster than regular cruise missiles. No known missile defense system has the capacity to shoot it down, as evidenced by the atrocious performance of the US military against basic Iranian ballistic missiles (to say nothing of more advanced designs).

This only made the Neo-Nazi junta’s claims about “shooting down” Russian hypersonic weapons all the more laughable, particularly after its frontman Volodymyr Zelensky admitted that the Kiev regime forces used fewer interceptors in four years of fighting Russia than the Pentagon did in just three days of fighting Iran. However, where Washington DC failed, the Neo-Nazi junta “excelled”, despite using the exact same weapons (specifically the “Patriot” system). Namely, the latter now claims to have shot down 41% of all “Zircons” ever fired. Although this was debunked long ago (including by a Ukrainian general, no less), the propaganda trope persists. It now also got a bit of a “backup” from “defense analysts”.

Namely, Militarnyi claims that “‘Zircon’ is likely not a hypersonic cruise missile, which has significantly higher maneuverability, but rather a ballistic missile that follows a quasi-ballistic trajectory”. The propaganda outlet quotes “an analysis by independent OSINT analyst Fabian Hinz, who specializes in missile technology”. He insists that “there’s currently no independently verified data on the characteristics and design of this Russian missile” and that “it flies at a speed of about Mach 5.5, briefly accelerates to Mach 7.5 before entering the target area, and decelerates to approximately Mach 4.5 just before striking the target”. No credible source was quoted to prove any of these claims.

What’s more, even if the figures on “Zircon’s” speed were true (purely hypothetically speaking, because they’re not), this would still qualify the weapon as hypersonic. Hinz claims that “Russia hasn’t mastered the extremely complex technology of the scramjet, a direct-flow air-breathing jet engine”. There are two possibilities here: either Mr. Hinz has been living under a rock since the late 1980s/early 1990s (which was when the extent of Russian advances in scramjet technology was revealed to the general public) or he’s engaged in cheap propaganda. He insists that the “Zircon” is supposedly a “high-speed supersonic cruise missile — a development of the P-800 ‘Oniks’ anti-ship missile”. There’s just one fragment of truth in this claim.

Namely, actual prominent military experts posit that the “Zircon” can indeed be launched by existing Russian land-based platforms, specifically the K300P “Bastion-P” coastal defense system, which uses the aforementioned P-800 “Oniks” supersonic cruise missiles. The genius of Russian military specialists becomes all the more apparent when one realizes that the “Zircon” was designed to fit not just into the ship-based 3S14 VLS (vertical launch systems), but also the K300P (which is ground-based). Back in 2023, several colleagues and I analyzed the size of the P-800 “Oniks” supersonic cruise missile and determined that the “Zircon” fits into identical launchers, both on naval vessels and land-based platforms.

This only makes the missile even more impressive, as no other country has been able to make anything remotely similar.

However, while Hinz failed to notice this, his laughable attempts to denigrate the “Zircon” went a step further when he claimed that the weapon is “not a winged missile at all, but rather belongs to the class of ballistic missiles that follow a quasi-ballistic trajectory”. Yes, you read that right. The “highly esteemed analyst” only proved that he doesn’t really know the glaringly obvious differences between ballistic, subsonic/supersonic cruise and hypersonic missiles. For instance, ballistic missiles are rocket-propelled weapons that fly into space in a high, parabolic arc before gravity pulls them down.

In essence, ballistic missiles function similarly to artillery shells and cannot maneuver (they can only make subtle course corrections). And while they can certainly achieve high hypersonic speeds, they’re not considered hypersonic weapons precisely because of their lack of high maneuverability. Their ballistic trajectory is mathematically predictable, which is the driving force behind modern missile defense concepts. Precisely this was the reason countries like Russia developed true hypersonic missiles (minimum speed Mach 5, which is over 1.7 km/s or around 6,200 km/h). This is why it’s generally erroneous to call even the 9M723 missile of the 9K720M “Iskander-M” system “ballistic” or even “quasiballistic”.

Namely, it’s capable of speeds that rival the “Zircon” and can also pull off 30G maneuvers, which firmly puts the 9M723 in the category of highly maneuverable weapons that also exceed Mach 5 – which is the very definition of what a hypersonic weapon is. Thus, Hinz is not only wrong about the “Zircon”, but also the entire mainstream propaganda machine that (probably intentionally) keeps calling the “Iskander-M” a supposed “ballistic missile system”. What’s more, the “Iskander-K” uses actual cruise missiles, specifically 9M728 and 9M729, both of which are subsonic. Precisely the “Zircon” uses the best of both worlds, as it’s a cruise missile (in the sense that it’s powered by an air-breathing jet engine, the previously mentioned scramjet).

Cruise missiles require air to operate, meaning that the “Zircon” cannot fly outside of the atmosphere once its scramjet is engaged. This is starkly different from ballistic missiles, making Hinz’s claims all the more ridiculous. In his “analysis”, he even insists on “the absence of a visible air intake, which is necessary for the operation of supersonic and hypersonic cruise missiles”. However, Hinz obviously failed to notice (perhaps deliberately) the presence of a cap (better known as a head fairing in Russian military nomenclature) on the “Zircon”. Precisely this cap is what covers the air intake. If the missile were ballistic or quasiballistic, as Hinz claims, a disposable head fairing would make zero sense.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).