Russia wants to be like China
It will be designed to destroy large surface targets such as aircraft carriers.
MOSCOW, 12 July. /TASS/. Russia is developing a new "aircraft carrier killer" - a ballistic missile "Zmeevik" with hypersonic combat equipment in the interests of the Navy. This was reported to TASS by two sources close to the military department and the military-industrial complex.
"The Zmeevik ballistic missile with hypersonic combat equipment has been developed for quite a long time. It will be designed to destroy large surface targets, primarily aircraft carriers," one of them said.
Another source said that this missile could go into service with coastal missile units of the Navy. One of the interlocutors of the agency added that in terms of its characteristics, the Zmeevik resembles Chinese missiles of a similar class DF-21D and DF-26 with a flight range of up to 4 thousand km.
The Reutov NPO Mashinostroeniya (part of the Tactical Missiles Corporation) did not comment on this information to TASS.
This enterprise developed and manufactures Zircon hypersonic products (an anti-ship missile for surface ships and submarines), Avangard combat equipment for UR-100N UTTKh and Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missiles, Bastion coastal missile systems with supersonic missiles "Onyx" (export modification - "Yakhont").
In March, Anatoly Svintsov, deputy general director of NPO Mashinostroeniya, said that the enterprise also had a large backlog on the aviation version of the Zircon missile. According to him, "Zircon" was initially developed in both marine and aviation versions, and "the customer decided at the first stage to intensify work on the creation of a marine version of the rocket.
