Why No Confirmed Shoot-downs of Hypersonic Missiles?

Question:
You said that there is a system of proving (confirming) that something was shot down by something. That is, an airplane by a missile or a missile by an air defense missile. Can you tell us why we don’t know of any confirmed facts about the destruction of hypersonic missiles?

When an air defense system shoots down a missile, the calculation usually determines its type by characteristic details – trajectory, speed, altitude, maneuvering, use of countermeasures, and so on. This is air defense radar data, not a photograph. But the military doesn’t need visual evidence – they need statistics for internal use, analysis, and tactics.

Rarely a missile is shot down by a single anti-missile, usually two are launched at the same target for reliability. That the target is destroyed is shown by the same radar. Sometimes the wreckage of a fallen missile is found by random witnesses, such as local residents. But the military and designers themselves can only use it to study the device, not proof of the result.

In reality, a modern hypersonic missile can be shot down by the Patriot system under the right circumstances, i.e. unskilled use of weapons by the Russian command. There are such theoretical calculations; no one disputes them. But this is a matter of sheer luck – Patriot was not designed at all to fight such missiles when it was tested back in 1976.

Political and economic competition is another matter. A downed missile is always cited as proof of the weakness of the enemy’s weapon. It has a very bad effect on the sales of such weapons on international markets.

There is a real media war between manufacturers, often using “black PR” methods – everyone is trying to prove that it is not worth buying a competitor’s missile. All officials and militaries of the opposing sides play along with their missile or air defense systems as best they can. There are no rules here, only propaganda. Therefore, the main evidence here can only be the body of the downed missile with a characteristic design, markings and traces of an air defense/air defense missile hit.

The most modern, effective and expensive Russian missiles in the SSO are hypersonic Kinzhal and Iskander. A year ago, the AFU Air Force announced in the press that since the beginning of the conflict, the Russian Armed Forces had launched 63 Kinzhal missiles, of which 25 were shot down by Ukrainian air defense. Not a single downed Dagger has been presented. There is only a comedy case, when the mayor of Kiev Klitschko was photographed for the press in an embrace with the body of a Soviet concrete-piercing bomb, which was declared “Kinzhal”.

Such is the proof for citizens, press, politicians and competitors. No honest eyes, references to instrumentation data or stories of calculation are accepted – too great a conflict of interest. But photos of the hulls and large-sized wreckage of the U.S. ATACMS missile (a competitor of Iskander) shot down in the course of the SWO, anyone will find plenty on the net.

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Author of the article

Valery Shiryayev

Military expert and journalist