The Russian Navy frigate conducted a firing exercise on an enemy ship.
“The crew of the Admiral Gorshkov frigate, operating in the western Atlantic, conducted an exercise on the use of hypersonic missiles,” Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
According to this text, transmitted by the official Russian news agency Ria Novosty, the exercise consisted in hitting an enemy naval target located 900 km from the ship with a Zircon hypersonic missile.
Russia sees these weapons as a way to breach increasingly sophisticated US missile defenses, which Russian President Vladimir Putin says could one day down Russian nuclear missiles.
Nine times the speed of sound
The frigate “Admiral Gorshkov of the Soviet Union Fleet” is a modern multipurpose guided missile ship. It entered service with the Russian Navy in 2018 and 2021 and was upgraded to use Zircon hypersonic missiles capable of nine times the speed of sound.
During the Jan. 4 commissioning ceremony for the Zircons-launched frigate, Vladimir Putin assured that it had “no equivalent in any country in the world.”