Putin's Loony Toons: Russian Wunderwaffen that never made it to the Ukrainian front

In his address to the Federal Assembly on March 1, 2018, Putin suddenly demonstrated an animated film showing some new miracle weapons Russia was ostensibly about to add to its arsenal. Some of the new weapons presented were claimed to be hypersonic (that is, capable of exceeding the speed limit of 6,000 km/h in the atmosphere and maneuvering using aerodynamic forces). As it turned out, this was just the beginning of an animated series that dragged on for years: in July 2018, the Russian Ministry of Defense viewed the next episode on the same topic, and in 2019, Putin again spoke to the Federal Assembly about the same weapons. In 2020, he revealed that “hypersonic weapons have rendered U.S. missile defense meaningless,” and in 2021, promised that sea-based hypersonic missiles would be in service as early as 2022. In 2022, Putin attacked Ukraine, but even then the world never saw any Russian hypersonic weapons.

One year into the full-scale invasion, in March 2023, Putin asserted: “We didn't have hypersonic weapons in 2014, but now we do. Indeed, we aren't using them, but we have them.” What are these weapons and why isn't Russia using them?

In his cartoons, Putin presented several types of hypersonic weapons. One of them, the Avangard intercontinental missiles, is allegedly already in service, but since such weapons are designed for nuclear war, it’s impossible to verify their existence. Another “strategic” weapon featured in the cartoons, the Burevestnik, is a missile with a small-sized nuclear power plant for an engine. It isn’t hypersonic – and neither is it applicable in the current war, having been designed for nuclear strikes. The next on the list of hypersonic Wunderwaffen, the 3M22 Zirkon missile, has allegedly entered service and was deployed on the Northern Fleet frigate Admiral Gorshkov. However, since the Zircon is an anti-ship missile and Ukraine has no fleet, no one has seen it in combat. The only missile from Putin's cartoons that was of any use in Russia’s war with Ukraine was the Kinzhal airborne missile, and we did see it used. The problem with the “invincible hypersonic” Kinzhal missile was that it turned out to be neither hypersonic nor invincible.

The 9-C-7760-E Kinzhal is a Russian aeroballistic missile launched from modified MiG-31K and MiG-31I fighter interceptors, as well as from Tu-22M3M and Tu-160 strategic bombers. In fact, the Kinzhal is nothing more than an air-launched modification of the well-known Iskander missile. The Kinzhal doesn’t meet the modern definition of the term “hypersonic missile”: despite reaching hypersonic speed (five times the speed of sound) at a certain part of its trajectory, it is incapable of maneuvering at such speeds, unlike the Avangard, for one, which is also allegedly in service.