by BS Watch. Retired CIA officer Ray McGovern points out the obvious lacunae in the narrative.Consortium NewsA Pandemic of ‘Russian Hacking’Ray McGovern, co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and retired 27-year career CIA whose tasks included preparing and briefing The President’s Daily Brief and leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch, and Joe Lauria, foreign affairs correspondent and investigative reporterSee alsoThen there is Military.com’s article, “Why Russia’s Hypersonic Missiles Can’t Be Seen on Radar,” which notes:The missile flies with an advanced fuel that the Russians say gives it a range of up to 1,000 kilometers. And it’s so fast that the air pressure in front of the weapon forms a plasma cloud as it moves, absorbing radio waves and making it practically
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BS Watch. Retired CIA officer Ray McGovern points out the obvious lacunae in the narrative.
Consortium NewsA Pandemic of ‘Russian Hacking’
Then there is Military.com’s article, “Why Russia’s Hypersonic Missiles Can’t Be Seen on Radar,” which notes:The missile flies with an advanced fuel that the Russians say gives it a range of up to 1,000 kilometers. And it’s so fast that the air pressure in front of the weapon forms a plasma cloud as it moves, absorbing radio waves and making it practically invisible to active radar systems.The only hope to stopping an incoming Zircon missile – or any hypersonic missile for that matter – would be to detect it early enough and be able to react fast enough to throw up defenses in its flight path. Barring its ability to maneuver at the last moment to evade these defenses – there is the possibility of intercepting them.U.S. Aegis missile interceptor systems require 8-10 seconds of reaction time to intercept incoming attacks. In those 8-10 seconds, the Russian Zircon missiles will already have traveled 20 kilometers, and the interceptor missiles do not fly fast enough to catch up.
But that’s if just one, or a few missiles are launched. Even a full-fledged US carrier strike group would be able to shoot down only so many of these missiles at one given time.The target is carrier groups protected by Aegis anti-missile systems.The footage made available of the Zircon’s recent test flight shows it deploying from one of several vertical launch tubes meaning that in the future – multiple missiles will be aboard any given Russian military vessel – meaning that several vessels can launch several missiles at any given time.
With the possibility of altering their flight paths accordingly – large numbers of missiles could reach a potential target or targets simultaneously and from multiple angles, overwhelming even the best air defenses in a process known as saturation.
In many ways, Russia’s hypersonic missile – the Zircon – is not just a technological achievement or a newly acquired and formidable military capability – it is also a useful component of a much wider diplomatic effort to shift the world from the Western-dominated unipolar “rules-based international order” – one underwritten by Western military aggression – and toward multipolarism where the cost of conflict is higher than the cost of fair competition and cooperation.
It is also a relatively inexpensive defensive missile and delivery system that raises the cost of forward projection of power (characteristic of imperial forces) and acts as a deterrent.
Russia’s Hypersonic ‘Zircon’ Missile Takes Flight. “Can’t Be Seen on Radar”. Strategic Implications