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While the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile has not attracted the same level of media attention as the strategic Avangard re-entry vehicle or even the air-launched Kinzhal aeroballistic missile, it nevertheless represents an important advance in military technology and represents the state-of-the-art of Russian technologies. It promises to maintain and even expand Russia’s conventional deterrence through its high guarantee of effective retaliatory capability even against the most advanced anti-air and anti-missile defenses.
The secrecy surrounding the 3M22 Zircon, to the point of there existing no official images of the weapon, is remarkable and reminds one of the careful effort to conceal the true nature of the P-700 Granit heavy anti-ship missile, specifically its air-breathing ramjet propulsion.  It is also indicative of the importance attached to this weapon by the Russian government. Zircon has already been assigned a NATO reporting designation of SS-N-33, indicating that the alliance is treating the reports of its development and testing fairly seriously.  As well it should, given that the weapon system is being developed by the world-famous NPO Mashinostroyeniya know for, among other things, the aforementioned Granit and the Oniks/Yakhont cruise missile boasting ramjet propulsion, top speeds several times the speed of sound,  and the capability of striking land and naval targets. While the Granit was never used in combat, Oniks has already proved itself in Syria, where it was used to destroy extremist high-value targets with high precision and played an important role in deterring NATO strikes against Syria by threatening its naval assets in the Mediterranean.
While the Oniks is still a potent weapon that poses an extremely difficult challenge for any point-defense system due to its small size and high speed, the nature of the offense-defense technological race means that its successor in the form of Zircon is already under development and will likely enter service within the next few years, though according to some officials it already forms part of Russia’s arsenal. It is entirely possible that while the weapon is still undergoing development and testing, some missiles are already being carried by naval vessels on an experimental basis, in the same way the air-launched Kinzhal aeroballistic missile was deployed while still undergoing evaluation.
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Dear friends,
This is the first of our monthly Q&A videos, which we announced in the “Join the SouthFront Army” video released on February 22nd. The questions were collected via a special post on the SouthFront Patreon account https://ift.tt/2UtZBqR
On Patreon you will find a new post where you can ask your questions for the March Q&A video https://ift.tt/2C7B8jA
Regarding the February results and plans for March, we want to make a few points:
First of all, thank you to all of you who supported SouthFront in February. With this support, we were finally able to collect the minimum monthly budget needed to maintain the current level of content production. Therefore, SouthFront is planning to release several more exclusive analytical videos and text analyses in March.
– Our team is currently finalizing the video about a new Russian hypersonic missile – Tzircon.
– There was also a vote on topics for future video analyses. As a result the next analytical video, to be produced by SouthFront will be: “The Expanding Global Footprint of U.S. Special Operations”. A vote on topics for upcoming video analyses can also be found on our Patreon page https://ift.tt/2Up1Prc
We want once again to say a big thank you to all our readers and subscribers, who support SouthFront. We are able to continue to do what we do only thanks to your help.
Sincerely yours,
SouthFront: Analysis & Intellignece
P.S. Full transcript: https://ift.tt/2C8Plgj
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