The launch of the hypersonic cruise missile Zircon from a Russian nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, in the Arctic Ocean, in an image released on October 4, 2021 by the Russian Defense Ministry afp_tickers
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–This content was published on 04 October 2021 – 09:56
(AFP)
Russia announced on Monday that it had successfully experienced two Zircon hypersonic cruise missile fire from a submarine, a weapon of a new type that Moscow considers invincible and which is causing concern in the United States.
In a statement, the Russian Defense Ministry said that the nuclear submarine “Severodvinsk” fired for the first time a Zircon shot while immersed “at a depth of 40 meters”.
According to that statement published on the Telegram messaging, the missile was fired from the White Sea and fell as planned on a target in the Barents Sea, in northern Russia.
A few hours earlier, the Russian military had indicated that the submarine fired a first Zircon shot from the surface on Sunday. It was, according to the ministry, the first test from a submarine.
These tests – started with the Zircon missile in 2020, from surface ships – concern Western countries, especially the United States.
The shooting comes as negotiations between Moscow and Washington on “strategic stability” have quietly resumed after the June meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden.
The issue of arms control is a central point of these negotiations, whose objective is to reduce tensions in bilateral relations, now degraded, and to stop an arms race.
Zircon is among the weapons that Putin called invincible. With a range of 1,000 km, it is planned to be integrated into surface ships and submarines of the Russian fleet.
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