Russia’s Ineffective Hypersonic Missiles and Missing Stealth Fighter

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Before Russia’s war with Ukraine started about 2 years ago, Russia and Putin bragged about their new hypersonic missiles (Kinzhal) and its new SU-57 stealth fighter.

The new weapons were supposed to be unstoppable.

Russia has claimed to use the Kinzhal missile to:
Destroy an underground weapons depot in Deliatyn on March 18, 2022
Destroy a fuel depot in Konstantinovka the next day
Hit a NATO command center in Ukraine
Destroy a U.S.-built Patriot surface-to-air anti-missile defense system

According to Russian officials, the Kinzhal can:
Hit a target up to 2,000 km (1,240 miles) away
Fly faster than 6,000 km/h

However, the Kinzhal missile has shown itself to be fairly inaccurate and likely slower than its claimed speed.

The Kinzhal entered service in December 2017 and was one of the six new Russian strategic weapons unveiled by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 1 March 2018. The Kinzhal missile has since been deployed on the MiG-31K, the Tu-160M, the Tu-22M3M and the Su-34. In an interview published by The Economist on 13 June 2023, the Ukrainian Patriot operators stated that the Kinzhal missiles travelled at approximately 1,240 m/s (Mach 3.6), which is about one-third of the maximum speed claimed by Russia. The Kinzhal is an air-launched ballistic missile. It’s believed to cost US$10 million. Russia may have about 75-100 of them and several have been used in the war. Ukraine has intercepted several (6 or more) Russia’s Kinzhals indicates that the missile’s status as a hypersonic system is questionable. The Kinzhal has shown itself to be fairly inaccurate.

The Russian Su-57 stealth fighter was supposed to be Russia’s answer to the US F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters. Russia might have ten built but if they have been used at all in Ukraine it was been to fire cruise missiles at far range. The Su-57 has been missing and almost completely unused. It is believed that Russia does not want to hurt its military equipment reputation by have Su-57s shotdown.

Russia had deployed and then took the new Armata tank out of Ukraine.

7 thoughts on “Russia’s Ineffective Hypersonic Missiles and Missing Stealth Fighter”

  1. Ukraine will be in as a bad a state as Russia. Its population has already shrunk from 51 million to 42 million (pre-Russian invasion) since the end of the Soviet Union. There are millions of young Ukrainians abroad as refugees and I’m pretty sure most wont be in any hurry to go back to a ruined country. The outflow will only continue if and when Ukraine joins the EU. Meanwhile, hundreds of young Ukrainian men are dying every day in a war that appears to be without end.

    Russia was supposed to be ‘the Upper Volga with missiles’ 30 years ago, but proved to have more durability than many in the West hoped. The idea that any kind of Russian government would ‘let China walk in’ and take the likes of Vladivostok, where the people feel just as Russian and are just or even more patriotic than the Russians in Moscow and St Petersburg, is a fantasy.

  3. is there any evidence 6 kinjals were shot down?

    wreckage photos? radar intercept data?

    where is this claim coming from?

  4. The US and Europe should purchase as many of the nuclear warheads as they can from the warlords. However, if you wait long enough most of them will be inoperational due to lack of maintenance.

  5. Russia/CIS is falling apart. Watch youtube videos of people travelling around Russia, the infrastructure is falling apart, there are ghost towns everywhere, most are dirt poor without even indoor toilets or basic home appliances. The climate is miserable – more than half the year basically bundled up at home.

    If the people there were richer or better educated they would emigrate – as most of their best do, and of course their demographics are dire, not helped by Putin-the-decidedly-not-Great’s desperate last war to assert Russian relevance, expending the remains of USSR’s conventional military power, killing off essential youth and driving great torrents to emigrate (and Europe will be desperate for their labor). All he’s achieved is hastening the final dissolution into fractured warring states with even poorer and more miserable populations ruled over by regional war-lords. This is in essence the last major war of the USSR cessation (just as WW1 was last of Ottomans).

    We should all be damned nervous about what will happen to residual nuclear weapons stockpiles.

    In 50 years there won’t be much left other than Australia-like Fly-in-fly-out mineral extractions operations through most of old USSR. Though long before then China will likely wander in and take possession of it.

    • I’ve seen a number of those videos and it’s pretty shocking. You can still “drive” around a good chunk of Russia via Google StreetView (most images are 2-3 years old in Russia) and see how most of the people live. As of yesterday Russia’s National Statistics Service is forecasting an annual population decline of 700,000 per year… if that’s what they’re willing to say publicly you have to wonder how bad it actually is. Just from looking at the data it’s pretty obvious they started blatantly lying around 2005.

      I agree that it’s only a matter of time before China just walks across the border and takes most of eastern Russia (in the case of the far east most of the lands were historically Chinese anyways).

  6. Mach 3.6 is about what would be expected near the apogee of a SRBM… which makes sense because the Kinzhal is just a recycled Iskander-M SRBM modified to be air launched.

    SU-57 has the RCS of a good 4th gen Fighter (e.g. about the same as an F-18E). I’m not surprised that they want to preserve the illusion that it is somehow a modern stealth fighter.

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