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by MattPalmer1086 254 days ago
I was referring to the Oreshnik, not the Kinzhal. But I'm no missile expert.
1 comments

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.