Who Has Fastest Hypersonic Missile? Russia, China or US?

The following piece, written by Jim Morris, first appeared on Warrior Maven, a Military Content Group member website.

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It’s a question that, if it’s not exactly keeping top Pentagon officials awake at night, certainly has them concerned about the answer during the day:

Which country has the fastest hypersonic missile?

One thing is for certain – it’s not the US. America has been playing catch-up with Russia and China when it comes to those missiles that can fly Mach 5 (3,800 miles per hour) or faster.

According to Slashgear, which looks at everything from tech to fast cars to the military, Russia comes out on top with its 3M22 Zircon scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missile.

The Zircon is estimated to have a top speed of more than Mach 8 (roughly 6,100 mph), has a range of about 620 miles, and can be launched from a number of platforms, including submarines, surface ships, and ground-based mobile launchers.

Of course, all of that is just estimates, speculation, or guesswork. It’s not as though Russia has been completely open about what the weapon can do.

Zircon was test-fired for the first time in 2017. In 2023, the missiles was reportedly used during the war with Ukraine. A month later, Russia news media said two Zircons had been fired into the heart of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. The reports said both hit military targets, while Ukraine said both missiles were intercepted by air defense systems.

Meanwhile, Russia’s TASS news service said that this year, Zircon will be loaded onto a new Yasen-M class submarine, the Perm. That could mark a potential new era in maritime warfare threats.

The big problem with hypersonic missiles is that their development might be outpacing that of defenses against them. Current missiles defense systems would have difficulty acquiring and maintain a target track on a missile traveling more than five times the speed of sound.

The Pentagon is working with defense contractors to come up with solutions. One effort, called  Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor Satellites, would allow defenses to receive threat data quickly by handing off target detail between otherwise disconnected sensor fields.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency is working on power-scaling ship-fired lasers so they can perform high-speed, long-range missile defense missions from warships. One of the big advantages of laser interceptors is that a large number of them could be fired at once to destroy a group of hypersonic missiles flying together.

That could require new methods of energy storage and distribution – something that Northrop Grumman is working on with its Integrated Power and Energy System.