A Russian warship armed with new-generation hypersonic cruise weapons will participate in joint exercises with the navies of China and South Africa in February.

The Russian state agency, TASS, said on Monday that it was the first official mention of the participation by the frigate, “Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Gorshkov,” armed with Zircon missiles.

Russia said the missiles flew at nine times the speed of sound, with a range of more than 1,000km (620 miles).

It added that the missile formed the centrepiece of its hypersonic arsenal and the Avangard glide vehicle that entered combat duty in 2019.

According to the agency, Admiral Gorshkov will go to the logistic support point in Syria’s Tartus and participate in joint naval exercises with the Chinese and South African navies.

On Thursday, the South African National Defense Force said the drills would run from February 17 to 27 near the port city of Durban and Richards Bay, aimed to strengthen the already flourishing relations between South Africa, Russia and China.

The exercise would be the second involving the three countries in South Africa, after a drill in 2019, the defence force added in its statement.

The “Gorshkov” held exercises in the Norwegian Sea this month after President Vladimir Putin sent it to the Atlantic Ocean to signal to the West that Russia would not back down over the war in Ukraine.

Russia saw the weapons as a way to pierce increasingly sophisticated U.S. missile defences that Mr Putin had warned could one day shoot down its nuclear missile.

China, Russia and the U.S. were in a race to develop hypersonic weapons, seen as a way to gain an edge over any adversary because of their speeds, greater than five times that of sound and because they were harder to detect. 

(Reuters/NAN)