Russia has used its new hypersonic 3M22 Zircon missile in Ukraine for the first time in nearly two years of the conflict, according to multiple news reports, marking a potential significant escalation of the war.
Preliminary analysis by the Kiev Scientific Research Institute for Forensic Examinations (KNDISE) of missile fragments from a Russian attack on February 7 claims that a Zircon missile had been used.
The missile is claimed to have a range of 1,000 kilometers and travel at nine times the speed of sound. Its hypersonic speed could mean significantly reduced reaction time for air defenses and the capability to attack large, deep and hardened targets.
Russia has not commented on the weapon’s alleged use in Ukraine. If its use in war is more widely confirmed, the weapon could pose an additional challenge to the embattled country’s air defenses amid uncertainty over the sustainability of Western military aid.
The Zircon missile was first flight-tested in 2015 and declared operational by 2022. Russia tested the missile off two warships, the Admiral Gorshkov frigate and the Severodvinsk submarine, before using it to arm the frigate in January 2023.
However, neither of those warships is currently in the Black Sea and it would be unusual for the missile to be fired in live combat for the first time from a vessel from which it has never previously been tested.
The Zircon is part of a Russian family of “superweapons” unveiled in March 2018 that are designed to penetrate emerging US missile defense systems and thus increase Russia’s bargaining power in strategic arms negotiations with the US.
A September 2021 Chatham House report describes the Zircon as a ship-launched hypersonic anti-ship missile, most likely a dual-capable system designed to strike high-value targets on land and sea including carrier air groups.
The report says that the Zircon consists of two elements: a solid fuel booster for the first part of its flight from the point of launch to an exoatmospheric altitude where it follows a “skip-glide” trajectory to the target, after which a detachable warhead most likely with a scramjet engine to maintain terminal velocity destroys it.
Russia has previously used hypersonic missiles against Ukraine, including the air-launched 9-S-7760 Kinzhal against the latter’s US-supplied Patriot missile system.
In a February 2023 article for the Modern War Institute, Peter Mitchell mentions that the Patriot’s May 2023 intercept of a Kinzhal missile shows the weapon’s limitations.
Mitchell says that, unlike the Zircon, which employs a scramjet engine or other advanced propulsion system while maintaining hypersonic speed, the Kinzhal has a solid-fuel rocket engine most likely derived from the SS-26 Iskander ballistic missile, which cannot be shut down in flight.
Furthermore, he says that once the Kinzhal’s solid-fuel rocket engine burns out, it coasts to the target, casting doubts on whether it can maintain its advertised Mach 10 hypersonic speed.
He points out that the method of attack leaves the Kinzhal vulnerable to interception during its terminal stage, with its small control surfaces raising questions about its agility and maneuvering capabilities, which he likens to a giant lawn dart loaded with explosives.
As such, the Zircon represents a step up for Russia’s strategic bombing campaign against Ukraine, intending to destroy critical military and infrastructure while sapping the latter’s morale. However, ballistic and hypersonic missile strikes may be of doubtful military value in breaking the military stalemate in Ukraine.
Sidharth Kaushal mentions in a January 2023 Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) that Ukraine has few civilian infrastructure targets that would justify the use of costly and scarce Zircon missiles.
Kaushal notes that Russia tends to use a mix of low-cost drones and cruise missiles against Ukraine, showing a desire to minimize the use of expensive and difficult-to-replace capabilities.
Still, Kaushal says hypersonic weapons such as the Zircon are the latest iteration of evolution and counter-evolution between missile-centric Russian forces and Western navies, with the former’s submarine-launched hypersonic weapons such as the Zircon underscoring the need for improved anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities by the latter.
However, US ASW capabilities have atrophied since the Cold War and have failed to keep pace with improvements in Russian and Chinese submarine capabilities.
In an April 2021 article for Proceedings, Walker Mills and other writers say that the US Navy’s P-3 Orion ASW aircraft, used during the Cold War, had dwindled to just 137 by 2010, with the last active-duty squadron retiring in 2019.
Mills and others mention that while the US Navy requires 138 P-8As, 128 are under contract as of early April 2021. Mills and others note that while the US Navy supplements the P-8As with MQ-4C Triton unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), they are spread thinly, pointing out that the P-8A is a high-demand, low-density asset spread thin in its role of protecting US surface vessels.
They also mention that the US surface fleet is less capable in ASW than it should be, suffering from distraction and warfighting atrophy, as the US Navy decommissioned the last of its frigates over five years ago. Meanwhile, the littoral combat ships’ ASW mission modules have struggled to satisfy the platform’s restrictive weight requirements.
Mills and others mention that the Constellation-class frigates will not join the surface fleet until the mid-to-late 2020s and that while guided-missile destroyers (DDG) and cruisers (CG) have robust ASW capabilities, they are high-demand, low-density assets with multiple commitments beyond the Indo-Pacific.
They point out that the vast expanses of the Indo-Pacific demand far more than the 10 or 14 DDGs or CGs currently available to the US 7th Fleet.
However, new technologies may compensate for the lack of high-end ASW platforms. While not entirely replacing them in quantity and substituting for physical presence, they can vastly improve existing capabilities while offering new capabilities.
In a February 2023 article for National Defense Magazine, Laura Heckmann mentions that artificial intelligence will allow sailors, airmen and marines to squeeze out more capability from existing systems and that AI can be helpful in real-time modeling and simulation supporting ASW mission planning by enabling the evaluation of the ocean environment.
Heckmann says that along with AI unmanned platforms could be used more aggressively in ASW operations. She points out the flawed approach of contemporary ASW operations as they do not scale well with procurement and sustainment costs running into the billions of dollars.
She writes that unmanned systems offer a cost-cutting solution and are easier to scale up, with their cost savings paying for the systems. Despite that, Heckmann cautions against a fully robotized approach to ASW, suggesting instead a blend of manned and unmanned systems.