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by adastra22 255 days ago
Civilian rockets and military/strategic rockets are not even remotely similar. Totally different technology driven by vastly different needs. Russia hasn’t had a technological edge in military rocketry since the 1950’s.
1 comments

I believe they used a hypersonic missile before the US has fielded theirs?
No, that's wrong.

The Kinzhal is just a normal ballistic missile. If it is "hypersonic", so were the missiles the US has sitting in bunkers.

China has the first real "hypersonic" weapon.

Besides, Russia's super awesome hypersonic missile that will totally kill the west is regularly intercepted by the Patriot platform. Because it's just a normal ballistic missile, which is what the Patriot is designed to intercept.

I was referring to the Oreshnik, not the Kinzhal. But I'm no missile expert.
All long and medium range rockets are hypersonic, simply by virtue of falling from space fast enough. From any country. So the "reached speed" metric is kinda pointless. Lately people tend to call rockets hypersonic is they can be controlled at the hypersonic flight stage. Oreshnic is an old ballistic missile, whose only innovation is removing third stage from an existing rocket, and can't be controlled with precision. This is why there was no significant damage and hits were all over the place with hundreds of meters of error. It is 80 million dollar equivalent of a single Smerch or Uragan shot, which is a pretty dumb and useless idea, considering price and complexity of a rocket.