Putin deploys Russian warship with Zircon
hypersonic missile, TASS says
By Brad Lendon and Anna Chernova, CNN
Updated 5:01 AM EST, Thu January 5, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin
has dispatched one of his country’s most modern warships armed with advanced hypersonic missiles on a long voyage through the Atlantic Ocean to
the Mediterranean Sea and into the Indian Ocean, Russian state media reported
Wednesday. The frigate Admiral Gorshkov set off from an unnamed northern
Russian port on Wednesday after Putin spoke with the ship’s commander and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu via
video link, according to a report from the TASS news agency.
Putin boasted that the ship was
carrying Zircon hypersonic missiles,
long-range weapons that travel more than five times the speed of sound and are
harder to detect and intercept. “It
has no analogues in any country in
the world,” Putin said, according to TASS.
“I am sure that such powerful weapons will reliably protect Russia from potential
external threats and will help ensure
the national interests of our country,” he added.
Russia tested the Zircon system in
late 2021, firing from the Admiral Gorshkov
in the White Sea and hitting a naval
target more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) away, according to reports at
the time.
The current mission would be its first deployment in a potential combat
situation. “The main efforts during the campaign will be focused on countering
Russia’s threats, maintaining regional peace, and stability together with
friendly countries,” Shoigu said in the TASS report.
Russia’s war against neighboring
Ukraine is now in its 10th month, but that conflict was not mentioned
specifically in the TASS report. And whether the Zircon missile could be
brought to bear in that war is uncertain. If it works as advertised by the
Russians, it is a fearsome weapon.
The US-based Missile Defense
Advocacy Alliance says the Zircon is “a maneuvering
anti-ship hypersonic cruise missile” with a range of somewhere between 500 and
1,000 kilometers (310 to 620 miles). The alliance
says its speed has been put at Mach 8, or almost 9,900 kilometers per hour
(6,138 mph). Hypersonic is defined as any speed above Mach 5 (3,836 mph).
“If that information is accurate,
the Zircon missile would be the fastest in the world, making it nearly
impossible to defend against due to its speed alone,” the alliance says on its
website. The site also points to the missile’s plasma cloud as another
“valuable” feature.
“During flight, the missile is
completely covered by a plasma cloud that absorbs any rays of radio frequencies
and makes the missile invisible to
radars. This allows the missile to
remain undetected on its way to the target,” it says.
Add to that the Zircon’s ability to alter its flight path and it becomes
an extremely formidable weapon. But using the Zircon missiles aboard the
Admiral Gorshkov against targets in Ukraine is logistically challenging.
From a Russian perspective, the
optimal firing range for the weapons
would be from the Black Sea, to the south of Ukraine. But to get there, the
Russian warship would have to pass through the Turkish-controlled Bosphorus
Strait, and Ankara has said since the early stages of the war in Ukraine that
it would not allow such access for foreign naval vessels.
While the Admiral Gorshkov could
theoretically fire on Ukraine from the northern reaches of the Mediterranean,
the flight path to Ukraine would go over NATO countries, something that would
be seen as a major escalation of Russian
aggression.
TASS said the Gorshkov is also
armed with Kalibr-NK cruise missiles, weapons which have a range of up to 2,500
kilometers (1,553 miles), according to the CSIS Missile Defense Project. But
those weapons, even with their longer range, would face the same problems
reaching Ukraine as the Zircons.
“He can show his domestic
audiences that the international reaction is not as effective as stated in the
Western media and that Russia still has friends in key areas,” Schuster said.
“Internationally, he is signaling that sanctions have not affected the Russian
navy’s ability to operate and that it remains a global maritime power.” Putin praised his military upon the
deployment, according to TASS. “This is great joint work, which ended with a
good, expected result,” Putin said.
“We will continue to develop the
combat potential of the Armed Forces, make advanced models of weapons and
equipment that will guard Russia’s security in the coming decades. This is a
promising weapon,” Putin said in the TASS report.
Task 1. Read the article and be ready to translate it.
Task 2. Write out the underlined words and translate them into Russian.
Task 3. Make up 5 questions in the written form to discuss the main facts
mentioned in the article.
Task 4. Think over the topic problem the author raises in the article.
Task 5. Write the rendering of the article.
