The Avangard, the Kinzhal and now the Tsirkon – Russia is leading the race to develop a range of new hypersonic weapons that President Vladimir Putin has dubbed "invincible."
Moscow's latest step came this week with another successful test of the Tsirkon, a ship-launched hypersonic missile.
Fired from one of Russia's most powerful warships, the Admiral Gorshkov frigate, a Tsirkon traveling at seven times the speed of sound flew more than 350 kilometers to hit a target on the coast of the Barents Sea.
If more tests are successful, the Tsirkon looks set to join Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles and the air-launched Kinzhal (Dagger) missiles in Russia's arsenal of hypersonic weapons.
Hypersonics are able to travel at velocities of at least five times the speed of sound and maneuver in mid-flight, making them much harder to track and intercept than traditional projectiles.
And experts agree that – for now at least – Russia has an edge in their development.
"No one except Russia has hypersonic weapons but everyone wants them," Moscow-based independent defense analyst Alexander Golts told AFP.
Putin used his state-of-the-nation address in 2018 to first present an array of hypersonic weapons, boasting that they could circumvent all existing missile defense systems.
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