“The guidance system is very complex”: an analyst assessed the effectiveness of the Zircon strike on Kyiv
Date: 2024-02-08 Author: Кирило Загоруйко Categories: WAR
Military expert Konstantin Krivolap said that in 2019, Putin, presenting the Zircon missile, showed a “completely copied” American prototype of the X-51 missile.
In addition to the speed, which is even greater than that stated in the American prototype, the Russians endowed their Zircon with an allegedly “high-precision homing head.” However, the veracity of this is questionable, since all anti-ship missiles have the same guidance mechanism, he told RBC-Ukraine.
“You cannot lock into the terrain, you may have GPS suppression, the missile flies along a ballistic trajectory, and when it approaches the target, the optical guidance head turns on, which compares the image from different angles. This guidance system is very complex, because there must be very high computing capabilities of the complex itself on the rocket in order to compare images from different angles and different heights,” he noted.
Krivolap explained that during flight at hypersonic speed, a plasma cloud forms around the missile, which makes it impossible to transmit radio signals, which makes it difficult both to detect this missile using radar and to point the missile itself at the target.
Questions also arise about the declared Zircon air-breathing engine. The fact is that the development of such an engine has been carried out by different countries, including the Soviet Union, since the second half of the last century, but since then no one has made significant progress.
“Since then, we have not made significant progress; there are a lot of factors that do not give stable results in starting the engine and its operation. Both the Americans and other countries working in this direction have faced this problem,” the analyst added.
