The concept of "missile" is actually very broad, with ground-to-ground, surface-to-air, air-to-surface, air-to-air, and corresponding ...... launched from the sea or from the seaAt least not less than the subsonic one. However, after careful consideration, it is estimated that the question should be asked about the "Dagger" hypersonic missile, which has been more common in recent years.
The official name of the "Dagger" in Russia is "9-A-7660 hypersonic air-launched missile system", and some materials are also called X-47, where the "X" is Russian, and the pronunciation is close to the Chinese character "Ha", similar to X-31, X-59, etc., which is the unified prefix of the Russian army's air-to-surface missiles. Russia calls the "Dagger" a hypersonic air-launched cruise missile, but the West generally believes that the "Dagger" missile is an air-launched version of Russia's land-based "Iskander" missile, not an ordinary air-launched cruise missile, and should be called an "air-launched ballistic missile."
When the specific "Dagger" began to be developed, has not been officially announced, only know that it has been tested since the end of 2017, although a lot of information says that the Tu-22M, Tu-160, including the Su-57 can be mounted, but so far, all the carrier aircraft that have seen the "Dagger" hung are MiG-31. At the beginning of 2018, Putin personally disclosed the existence of this missile, and later used it as a sharp knife in the Russian-Ukrainian war, and even several large-scale offensives of the Russian army had to wait for a new batch of "Dagger" missiles to be produced before they could be implemented.
Russia itself says that it can reach Mach 10 at the highest, and some even say Mach 12, but according to the operator of the "Patriot" surface-to-air missile that shot down the "Dagger," the speed of the "Dagger" displayed by the radar at the time of the interception was only Mach 3. However, if it is really an air-launched version of a ballistic missile, it is not unusual for the terminal speed to reach Mach 10. In fact, if you look at the shape of the "Dagger", this missile does not have the characteristics of a cruise missile, and the tail wing obviously cannot provide the lift to support the cruise flight of the missile, and can only be used as a stable wing, at most a small adjustment of the missile's attitude and flight path, which is indeed more in line with the characteristics of a ballistic missile, so the West's inference is not unreasonable.
But the accuracy of the "Dagger" is very high, and it is said that during a test in February 2019, a "Dagger" hit a target the size of a passenger car at a distance of about 1,000 kilometers in adverse weather conditions. In the Russian-Ukrainian war, on March 18, 2022, the Russian army used the "Dagger" missile for the first time and hit a Ukrainian ammunition depot, which was built during the Cold War and was said to be able to withstand the attack of nuclear **, but it was destroyed by the "Dagger". The Ukrainian propaganda department is not eating in vain, around the end of 2022, there was a time when Ukraine officially announced that it had shot down 7 "Daggers" in one day, and this news was not only immediately refuted by Russia, saying that there were not so many "Daggers" in press, and the West did not believe it until Ukraine introduced the American "Patriot", and the West officially reported that Ukraine shot down the "Dagger".
However, Russia said that it does not have so many missiles, which should be a truth. The West estimates that the cost of a "Dagger" is as high as 10 million US dollars, which is indeed a bit high for Russia now, but it is not the most critical, the materials needed to produce missiles may be more critical, before the war between Russia and Ukraine, the inventory of "Dagger" missiles in the Russian army was not much, and after the war, the West imposed a large-scale comprehensive blockade on Russia, in order to obtain some special materials or components, such as steel for the missile body, It is not so easy to bomb computer chips and so on, and if you want to expand production, it is not to say that you can expand it, of course, the specific lack of which is unknown to the outside world.
In addition to the "Dagger", the Russian army also has a "Zircon" missile that has recently attracted more attention, which is a ship-borne hypersonic anti-ship missile, and the relevant information is not known to the outside world, and Merlin is even less known.
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