Something To Be Said About Kinzhal.

Namely what this means for a number of Russian and Western military "analysts" and dispels the last myth (BS) about Kinzhal. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalists on Wednesday that he has ordered warplanes to conduct regular patrols of the neutral airspace over the Black Sea. “Our MiG-31 planes are armed with Kinzhal missile systems. It is known that they have a range of over 1,000 km and a Mach-9 speed,” he said at a press conference in Beijing. The announcement was not meant as a threat, Putin stressed, but rather a reaction to escalating instability, particularly in the Middle East. He mentioned the US’ deployment of two aircraft carrier strike groups to the Mediterranean Sea in support of Israel as a factor. As stipulated by Putin, the range of the hypersonic weapons potentially puts the eastern part of the sea within striking distance of Russian patrols.

I'll explain now why this is important. No, not the fact that Kinzhal carriers are patrolling now over the Black Sea, where they also have a very good cover by SU-30SMs and SU-35 of both VKS and Black Sea Fleet aviation. The fact that Kinzhals are deployed to counter US Navy's Carrier Battle Groups in Eastern Med finally puts a huge fat point to the so called "discussion" by fanboys about Kinzhal's capabilities as merely hypersonic weapon system dependent strictly at precise targeting and ONLY against static, that is not moving, targets. 

I was on record from the get go, that Kinzhal, while having obvious similarities with Iskander, is a completely different system not only in terms of delivery--aeroballistic vs. purely land-launched ballistic, but because of its warhead which is designed to operate autonomously in terms of fine scan and search (dorazvedka) and guide itself to any kind of target, moving or not. Iskander has only remedial such (say anti-shipping) capability and even then with constant external targeting updates against moving targets. Kinzhal with its M=9+ is a fully shoot-and-forget weapon which needs only rough targeting. In other words, it doesn't need precise, measured in meters targeting, it merely needs a circle, which, of course has a radius of Speed of the target multiplied by Tau, which is the time of aggregation of obsolescence of the initial targeting. 

What it means, that, even if from the initial detection and initial targeting of the ship or aircraft carrier 30 minutes have passed, the uncertainty for the ship (target) will have the size, say if it moves with the speed of 30 knots: 30 times 0.5 = 15 nautical miles. That means we have a circle of the radius of 28 kilometers in which the ship is located. Even if we discount command updates to Kinzhal, that means that it will have the range to detect and guide itself to hit target. And this is, literally, the most primitive scenario. I do not go here into the realities of different types of recon and their sensor and data fusion which allows for extremely reliable detection and targeting, nor do I know highly classified structure and capabilities of Kinzhal's optronic and radar means of detection, but what is absolutely clear--they are more than adequate for any type of attack against any target on the surface and this attack cannot be stopped. And that wraps all "discussions" by fanboys about Kinzhal's anti-shipping capabilities. That what is so important about this deployment.