Russia Just Fired a Hypersonic Missile from a MiG-31 Fighter

By Dave Majumdar,The National Interest

The Russian Ministry of Defense has shown off a video of a training launch of its new Dagger (Kinzhal in Russian) hypersonic missile from a Mikoyan MiG-31 Foxhound interceptor.

Portions of the video were intentionally blurred to obscure certain aspects of the weapon, but the Kinzhal appears to be an aero-ballistic missile rather than a scramjet-powered air-breathing missile. However, that should come as no surprise to serious analysts because no nation on Earth has mastered the material sciences to build a true scramjet-powered missile yet. That technology is still years away.

“Crew of MiG-31 fighter of the Russian Aerospace Forces conducted combat training launch of a hypersonic missile of the Kinzhal high-precision aviation missile system in the assigned area,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said on its Facebook page. “The fighter took off from a Southern military district airfield in course of test combat alert. The launch was conducted normally. The missile hit the target at a training ground. Hypersonic missile confirmed its technical operational performance and timing data of the Kinzhal missile system.”

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As the Russian Defense Ministry explains, the Kinzhal missile is designed to strike both land and maritime targets.