According to the Commander of the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Mykola Oleshchuk, Ukraine shoot down Kinzhal hypersonic missile over Kyiv by the Patriot air defense system on May 4.
According to Defense Express, Ukraine’s Armed Forces successfully intercepted a Russian Kinzhal (Kh-47) hypersonic missile at around 02:40 a.m.
“I congratulate the Ukrainian people on a historic event! Yes, we have shot down the “unparalleled” Kinzhal,” Oleshchuk said.
Oleshchuk claims that the Kinzhal missile was launched by a MiG-31K fighter jet from Russian territory.
Air Defense unit has detected, tracked, and defeated hypersonic missiles in the final phases of flight.
The Defense Express article provides photos of wreckage that’s purported to be part of the KKinzhal air-launched hypersonic missile.
Based on the photos, the wreckage without a warhead fell at a stadium in the Kyiv city limits.
One of the photos shows a nosecone that is most similar to the one used in the Kh-47 Kinzhal missile with a complex shape of sharp diameter transitions.
The Russian military says the Kinzhal is an ‘unstoppable’ air-launched hypersonic ballistic missile.
The Kinzhal, which means “Dagger” in Russian, missile is reported to fly at speeds of up to Mach 10, or 7672 miles per hour, and has a range of around 3,000 kilometers when launched from a modified MiG-31K fighter jet, allowing it to be used as a precision standoff weapon in Ukraine.
The Kinzhal missile was among the six new weapons unveiled by Russian President Vladimir Putin during his 2018 state-of-the-nation address.
