Russia says it has successfully launched powerful new missile

Russia says it has successfully launched powerful new missile

Russia has said it successfully launched a hypersonic missile described by Vladimir Putin as an ideal weapon when he unveiled new armaments earlier this month.
The Kinzhal missile was launched from a MiG-31 aircraft that took off from an airfield in south-western Russia, the defence ministry said.
“The launch went according to plan: the hypersonic missile hit its target,” the ministry said.
It released footage of two pilots preparing for a flight and then running towards a jet carrying a large missile.
Set to rousing, patriotic music, the video showed a missile detaching from the airborne plane and gliding across the sky, leaving a fiery trail.
The Kinzhal missile was one of the weapons the Russian president unveiled in his state of the nation address earlier this month, ahead of a presidential election on 18 March that he is all but guaranteed to win.
The US defence secretary, James Mattis, said that nothing Putin showed off changed anything from the Pentagon’s perspective, as he spoke to reporters as he travelled to Oman.
“I saw no change to the Russian military capability and each of these systems that he’s talking about that are still years away, I do not see them changing the military balance. They do not impact any need on our side for a change in our deterrence posture.”
One of the technologies Putin touted was a robotic torpedo that could hit an US port city, but Mattis said that makes no difference as Russia already can target US port cities with missiles. “It doesn’t change anything other than how much money do they want to spend on something that does not change at all the strategic balance,” he said.

Putin said the tested hypersonic missile flies at 10 times the speed of the sound and can overcome air-defence systems.
The missile has been deployed in the southern military district since 1 December, he said.
Dmitry Rogozin, the deputy prime minister, said on Facebook that work had been carried out to modernise the “unique” MiG-31 that will carry the missile.
Since the start of the year, more than 250 sorties have been carried out by the aircraft to perfect the missile system, the defence ministry said.