The Ukrainian army said on Tuesday that it had shot down ten hypersonic Kinjal missiles fired by Russia, “a record” since the start of the war. 20 minutes explains to you what this weapon is, presented as “invincible” by Moscow.
What is the Kinjal missile?
The kh-47M2 Kinjal, or Kinžal in Russian (dagger, dagger) is a four-ton air-to-ground hypersonic ballistic missile, whose speed according to the Russians could reach Mach 10, or 3,400 meters per second (12,000 km/h), notably by its ability to be fired from a MiG-31k interceptor. It can also be launched from a Tu-160M or Tu-22M3 bomber. This missile, whose name for NATO is AS-24 Killjoy, would have entered service at the end of 2017, but was presented for the first time on March 1, 2018 by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who then announced the reinforcement of its arsenal with several so-called “new generation” weapons, supposed to escape any defense system.
If the range of the Kinjal is sometimes announced at 2,000 or even 3,000 km, the range of the missile alone, without its launcher, would in reality be “only” 800 km. The Kinjal must in fact be considered as a system, consisting of a launcher aircraft (the MiG-31 k) and a 9-С-7760 missile. Its first use since the start of the war in Ukraine would date back to March 18, 2022, a little less than a month after the start of the conflict. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu then affirmed that this missile would fly “at a speed greater than Mach 10” and would be “capable of changing its trajectory along the way in both vertical and horizontal planes”.
The machine also proves to be particularly resistant. “The head is made of 92% titanium and the tip is made of a particularly hard alloy of titanium and tungsten” described in The world August 19, 2023Oleksandr Rouvin, director of the Scientific Investigation Institute of Legal Expertise in kyiv, responsible for analyzing missiles fired into their territory by Kremlin forces.
Fast, strong… but not “invincible”
” Today [mardi]the Air Force […] shot down all ten Kinjal Kh-47M2 missiles using the Patriot system. This is a record,” Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Army Valery Zaluzhny said on Tuesday on X (formerly Twitter).
A record, but it is not the first time since the start of the war that Ukraine claims to have destroyed Kinjal. Thus Ukraine would have shot down its very first Kinjal above kyiv on May 5, then six others on May 16. After a break of several months, Russia again launched three hypersonic missiles on December 14, 2023 towards kyiv and western Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Force then announced that one of these Kinjal missiles had been destroyed. With the ten missiles intercepted on Tuesday, this potentially makes eighteen Kinjals shot down by Ukrainian forces since the start of the conflict.
So, are these weapons really “invincible” as the Russians claim? Since launching the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has reserved these warheads for “what it considers to be high-value, well-defended targets” but their “combat debut […] were certainly mixed,” analyzed the British Ministry of Defense. “A large number” of these shots “probably missed their targets, while Ukraine also managed to intercept” these attacks, he concluded.
always in The worldthe director of the kyiv Institute of Scientific Investigation and Legal Expertise estimated on August 19 “that the Kinjal is only a variant of the Iskander missile [missile balistique sol-sol à moyenne portée conçu il y a trente ans], shot from an airplane. » An analysis shared by many experts, sometimes referring to Kinjal as “a weapon of propaganda. »
Ukraine calls for strengthening its anti-aircraft defense
However, these weapons promise to be very devastating. “If the missiles had hit their targets, the consequences would have been catastrophic,” Ukrainian army commander Valery Zaluzhny admitted on Tuesday. In this context, and faced with the intensification of Russian air attacks in recent days, Ukraine “needs more systems” of anti-aircraft defense and “munitions for them”, noted General Zalouzhny. “There is no reason to believe that the enemy will stop here,” he warned.
On December 19, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine would receive “several” new American Patriot air defense systems, valuable for countering attacks from Russia. It was they in particular who thwarted Kinjal’s shots. “I will not give the number, but several Patriot systems will be sent to Ukraine to protect our country during the winter,” assured the Ukrainian president.