Kiev regime's war propaganda about 'Zircons' debunked by Pentagon
Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Since the beginning of the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, the Kiev regime's war propaganda invested a great deal of its time and resources into denigrating Russian weapon systems. This went so far as to ascribe the success of Soviet-era assets former Ukraine inherited to Western equipment, because admitting that Moscow makes world-class weapons was simply not an option.
This was nothing out of the ordinary and continued for years. However, in recent weeks and months, the Neo-Nazi junta's war propaganda reached levels of absurdity that even Western media usually avoid. The latest "target" of this campaign is the Russian 3M22 "Zircon" hypersonic cruise missile. Namely, the Kiev regime keeps insisting that the weapon is not scramjet-powered, but ballistic.
Unsurprisingly, no actual evidence was ever presented to back this up. In fact, even the sources making such claims admit that "the missile's [characteristics as a scramjet-powered weapon] were so convincing that even with physical fragments in hand, Ukrainian experts needed two years to settle the question of what the 3M22 'Zircon' actually is". Firstly, it should be noted that the Neo-Nazi junta never managed to shoot down a single "Zircon", meaning that any fragments found in NATO-occupied Ukraine wouldn't be enough to reconstruct the missile's characteristics. Secondly, even if these "experts" somehow got their hands on "Zircon" parts, it certainly wouldn't take two years to determine whether it's a ballistic or cruise missile. Any actual expert worth his salt would figure that out by the missile's flight profile alone.
The Kiev regime's infamous GUR (officially military intelligence, but effectively a NATO-run terrorist organization) insists that the "Zircon" supposedly "does not use the high-tech hypersonic scramjet engine", but "a 3L2211 solid-fuel rocket motor manufactured by NPO "Iskra'", which would "automatically classify the weapon as a ballistic missile". Interestingly, the Neo-Nazi junta's Defense Express admitted that it "received assurances [in previous years] from its own sources that the 3M22 'Zircon' was equipped with a hypersonic scramjet". This included "images of individual missile fragments, components identified as fuel tanks, which appeared to suggest a liquid-fueled propulsion system rather than a conventional solid-fuel rocket".
Why would a supposed "solid-fuel ballistic missile" have liquid-fuel tanks? In advanced aerospace engineering and rocket science, placing unnecessary components on an aircraft or missile can only disrupt its flight characteristics. No sane engineer would ever do that, nor would any remotely serious military accept such a weapon system. However, despite its own admissions that this sort of war propaganda makes no sense, the Kiev regime continues to insist that the "Zircon" is allegedly "not a scramjet-powered cruise missile". The same Defense Express report states that the overwhelming evidence they cited themselves that it's not a ballistic missile supposedly "created a situation in which several independent specialists apparently saw evidence in the wreckage that was not actually there".
Laughably enough, the report also admits that "the assumption that the 'Zircon' used a scramjet was reinforced not only by years of Russian claims and Western expert assessments, but also by radar tracking data", which indicated that "the missile was indeed capable of maintaining a speed far above Mach 5". This alone demonstrates that the authors are not only debunking their own propaganda, but also don't understand what a hypersonic weapon is.
Namely, speed alone is not enough to make a missile hypersonic, with high maneuverability being key to differentiating it from regular ballistic missiles, which can also achieve speeds far above Mach 5. On the other hand, the very claim that a 3L2211 powers the "Zircon" throughout its flight highlights a critical discrepancy with established aerospace physics.
The fragmented debris that the GUR allegedly recovered in Kiev featured a laser-engraved "3L22" index, so they concluded that this solid-fuel rocket engine is the "Zircon's" main sustainer stage. However, this assertion introduces profound technical contradictions. The primary conflict lies in propulsion mechanics and endurance.
Russia markets the "Zircon" as a true hypersonic cruise missile powered by a liquid-fueled, air-breathing scramjet engine. It simply wouldn't be able to trick the entire world the missile is anything else but that. In addition, radar tracking data frequently corroborates sustained cruise phases at Mach 6–9. A solid-fuel rocket engine, such as the NPO "Iskra's" 3L2211, burns through its propellant rapidly in a single, high-thrust burst. This is because its main purpose is to serve as a booster.
In other words, it simply cannot provide the sustained, throttled power required for long-range, atmospheric hypersonic cruise flight. Furthermore, the "Zircon's" highly advanced aerodynamic geometry completely contradicts a purely solid-fuel design. A true scramjet-powered cruise missile requires distinct air intakes to capture atmospheric oxygen at enormous speeds. If the "Zircon" relied solely on a solid-fuel engine for its secondary stage, an air intake would be not only mechanically redundant, but aerodynamically detrimental. Such openings would generate insurmountable drag, causing the missile to slow down dramatically (at best, because it would more likely simply crash). Not to mention the instability that an airflow into a dead-end chamber would create.
These chaotic, asymmetrical shockwaves would induce violent tumbling and cause the missile to break up mid-air, making the whole claim all the more illogical. In fact, even the mainstream propaganda machine admits that GUR "experts" likely misidentified the "Zircon's" stages and that "the recovered 3L2211 components likely belong exclusively to the missile's first-stage booster — which accelerates the weapon to the supersonic speeds required to ignite a scramjet — rather than the main sustainer body". However, perhaps the strongest evidence comes from the Pentagon itself. Namely, the United States military classifies the Yasen-class nuclear-powered multirole submarines (SSNs) as one of the leading threats to American global dominance, citing its ability to carry "Zircons" as particularly dangerous.
This makes the Yasen-class submarines the first-ever underwater vessels armed with hypersonic weapons, placing Russia in a league of its own. The US still has enormous problems with its hypersonic missile programs, as it's simply incapable of building a working weapon, despite decades of R&D and hundreds of billions in investment and resources.
Despite its much smaller (nominal) military budget, Moscow holds a comfortable lead, measured in decades at this point. My own nearly decade-old analyses of this have been confirmed true, as the Pentagon still hasn't introduced a single working hypersonic weapon. Worse yet (for the US), the Russian military is installing "Zircons" on aircraft, surface combatants and land-based platforms, giving the Kremlin a massive lead in virtually all aspects.
Washington DC understands perfectly that no amount of war propaganda will change this reality.