The defense against cruise missiles
Russia says that the U.S missile defense is useless against cruise missiles(1). The thing is that the nuclear-powered cruise missiles and the Hypersonic Cruise Missiles (HCM) are very difficult targets, and the thing is that the development of those missiles is not a new idea. If the nuclear-powered cruise missiles shot down, the pollution will cause problems in the large areas. The idea of that kind of system born in the 1950s.
And the idea was that when the nuclear-powered missile would fly across some nation, that missile would cause horrifying radioactive waste, which can be very lethal. In some early cruise missile concepts were planned to fly a quite low altitude with extremely high speed and where the cone, what the high-speed flight causes would destroy everything in the route of the missile. The codename for the American project was "Project Pluto"(2).
Russian nuclear-powered cruise missiles are more advanced than the U.S concept. The name of that nuclear-powered cruise missile is The 9M730 Burevestnik (NATO: SSC-X-9 "Skyfall")(3). That cruise missile is installed under TU-160 "Blackjack" bombers and "Oscar II" class cruise missile submarines.
Russia has also conventional anti-ship hypersonic cruise missiles(4). There has also developed the hypersonic cruise missiles by using ballistic missiles to take them to the suborbital trajectory, and then that system would launch the engines when it re-enters to the atmosphere.
The idea of conventional hypersonic cruise missiles is not new either. The hypersonic scramjet cruise missile-projects reported from the former Soviet Union. The goal was to develop the cruise missile, which would shot out from the atmosphere by using a ballistic trajectory. When the missile dives back to the atmosphere and if the speed is high enough, the ramjet or scramjet engines would start. The speed of the hypersonic cruise missiles about Mach 8 to 12. The speed of the ammunition of GAU-8 "Avenger" cannon, when they hit to target is about Mach 1,5, and the wight is about 400 grams (5).
That cannon is used in the famous A-10 "Thunderbolt II" The hypersonic cruise system would carry the concrete profile, what weight are 500 kilograms to the target by the speed of Mach 12. So the kinetic energy of that kind of impact is very high, and even without explosions, the kinetic energy causes very big destructions if that kind of missile hits the things like a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. That can cause that the entire ship will vaporize. And if the HCM is equipped with a nuclear warhead, that thing is hard to intercept, because it's so low-flying.
The thing is that the U.S missile defense system is created for defensive purposes. That means that some actions that are created for that system are meant to keep undercover. When the enemy missiles are coming there is things, what is making those missiles effective against a certain type of targets.
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik
(4)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M22_Zircon
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