Russian Navy’s birthday gift to Vladimir Putin – a 1000km/h missile

Vladimir Putin gets a birthday boost — the Russian navy tests a missile that can travel at up to eight times the speed of sound.

The Russian Zircon hypersonic cruise missile is launched from the Admiral Groshkov frigate on Wednesday in the White Sea. Picture: Russian Defence Ministry via AP

President Vladimir Putin got a birthday boost on Wednesday as the Russian military said it had successfully tested a hypersonic missile that can travel at up to eight times the speed of sound.

Valery Gerasimov, chief of the army’s general staff, said the Tsirkon missile covered a distance of more than 450km in 4½ minutes to destroy a target in the Barents Sea off Russia’s Arctic coast. He said it was fired from an Admiral Gorshkov-class frigate in the White Sea and that it marked the first time the missile had hit a target at sea.

The Tsirkon (or Zircon) is a ship-launched hypersonic cruise missile able to reach 9880km/h, with a range of up to 956km.

It can be armed with a conventional or nuclear warhead. General Gerasimov said that Russian submarines and ships would be armed with the missile when trials were complete.

“The work on the Tsirkon system and the successful testing of this missile is a big event in the life of both the armed forces and the whole of Russia,” Mr Putin, who turned 68 on Wednesday, said.

Elsewhere, Pussy Riot, the opposition activists, hung rainbow LGBTQI flags from official buildings in Moscow. The group wants same-sex partnerships legalised, an investigation into the reported torture and killings of gay men in Chechnya and the repeal of Russia’s “gay propaganda” law.

Pro-Kremlin activists hung a massive banner of Mr Putin opposite the US embassy. It read: “Happy b-day president number one.”

Tass, the state-owned Russian news agency, posted an interview with Mr Putin in which he made a rare reference to his grandchildren. “I have grandchildren. I’m happy, they are very good. (They are) small, sweet kids.” He did not clarify, however, which of his two daughters had given birth, or when.

Mr Putin revealed the existence of the Tsirkon missile in February last year. Russia is beefing up its Arctic military presence as it seeks to assert ownership over vast supplies of offshore oil and gas. Eight people were killed last year during an explosion at a secretive research site in Russia’s far north that analysts say may have been taken place during testing of the Tsirkon missile.

An upgrade of Russia’s military potential has been one of Mr Putin’s priorities in recent years amid rising tensions with the West over its military involvement in Ukraine and Syria.

Russia’s armed forces are better equipped and at a higher state of readiness than at any period since the 1990s, according to a recent dossier.

“Combined with a more assertive foreign policy, these forces constitute a capability that should not be ignored,” the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said.

In December, Russia said it had deployed Avangard hypersonic missiles that the Kremlin says can travel at 20 times the speed of sound. The US has set aside $US3bn for a “war room” to develop a new generation of weapons to catch up.

Russian and US officials met in Helsinki on Monday for talks on a deal to replace the New START treaty, the only remaining agreement limiting Moscow and Washington’s nuclear arsenals.

The Times