Why the Tsirkon matters for the Russian Navy

On July 10 and July 12, Russia Media announced two important facts regarding the future of the Russian Navy. The first article, on July 10, announced that the Project 22350 frigate RFS Admiral Golovko will be the first Russian warship to be standard equipped with the Tsirkon hypersonic missile. On July 12, it was announced that the frigate RFS Admiral Gorshkov was scheduled for a fourth and final test launch of the Tsirkon missile. This launch is planned to take place before the end of July. When successful, the missile will pass the state-trails and be accepted in the Russian Navy.

Both articles give a clear indication that Russia will start using the Tsirkon missile as part of the standard loadout of its surface vessels in the very near future. Once deployed with its active surface fleet, the Tsirkon missile will give a temporarily advantage to the Russian Navy over its adversaries in terms of offensive strike capabilities.

Russia's naval doctrine differs from the west as it perceives sea power as the means to protect the maritime flanks of the country. As such, its strategic objective is defensive in nature, namely prevent the enemy naval forces from getting close to Russia's shores. Thus, the capital vessel on the Russian side is the cruiser, armed with a wide variety of anti-ship and anti-air missiles. These vessels operate together with submarine forces, land based aircraft and coastal missile batteries in creating a zone where offensive combat power can be concentrated against an intruder and prevent them from operating in Russia's maritime flanks.

This stands in contrast to most western naval doctrines who view the sea as a means of projecting military power against an adversary. Within western maritime doctrine, the means of projecting power is central and this is reflected by the fact that the main capital ship is viewed to be the aircraft carrier. This vessel serves as a floating airbase from which airstrikes can be delivered throughout the littoral zone of a maritime adversary.

As Russia's, and the former Soviet Navy, were heavily missile oriented, western and NATO maritime forces developed several anti-missile defense systems to protect their warships against the Russian/Soviet missile threat. This is best seen in the structure of a US carrier action group which normally has one Ticonderoga class cruiser and two to three Arleigh Burke class destroyers with it as protection against aircraft and missiles. These vessels also serve as floating missile batteries capable of striking hostile land and sea targets.

A credible Russian naval doctrine is one which can successfully keep NATO forces out its littoral zones. In order to accomplish this, the Russian navy must be able to sink, or at least disable, a US aircraft carrier. This in turns means that it must be able to break through the air and anti-missile defenses of the carrier action group in order to reach the carrier itself. The Soviet Navy accomplished this mainly through quantity of missiles in order to overwhelm the air-defense systems and deplete the missile batteries of the US cruisers and destroyers. This was later augmented by quality in the form of supersonic missiles.

Tsirkon is a continuation of the supersonic anti-ship missile. This missile, allegedly capable of reaching speeds up to Mach 8 and 9, is capable to attack both land and naval targets with a range of 1.000 km (540nmi). However, the ranges involved in the test launches have so far been typically around 450 km with only one test launch exceeding 500km range. Flight altitude is reported to be at 28 km.

Artist rendering of Tsirkon missile - Source: Naval New

The greatest advantage of the Tsirkon missile is it speed which gives a defending opponent very little time to react. Naval vessels need to detect and track the missile before it can be countered. This process takes time in the form of several radar sweeps to start measuring its position, distance, heading and speed. This data is needed to calculate an intercept for an air-defense missile or to aim the close-in weapon systems. The faster the incoming missile, the less time there is to complete this process. The high speed also means that the missile can travers the effective engagement ranges of the air-defense missiles and ship mounted close-in weapon systems faster thus decreasing the change of being countered by these systems, in turn increasing the change of penetrating the air defense screen.

Though practical data regarding a Tsirkon missile versus missile defense systems does not exist, the theoretical basis is solid. Air defense systems at sea are developed to deal with missiles flying generally seven to eight times slower than the Tsirkon missile. These include the Penguin, Harpoon, Exocet, Tomahawk and Kh-35. When compared to the current arsenals of Russian supersonic anti-ship missiles (P-500, P-700, P-800, P-1000), the Tsirkon missile is in general two to three times faster. To put it short, western air defense systems are not developed to deal with hypersonic missiles.

The Tsirkon missile will thus give the Russian Navy an advantage in naval warfare in the coming years. naval warfare has always been a struggle between offensive and defensive capabilities mounted on ships. In time, new types of air defense systems can be mounted on future generations of warships. We already see several of these systems under development such as the ODIN laser on US navy warships which can disrupt sensor systems on missiles. Lasers seem to be the best active defense against hypersonic missiles by going for a thermal rather than a kinetic kill, but there are still restrictions regarding their energy consumption and the power plants installed on current warships. Even when these problems can be fixed, until then, Russia has an offensive advantage over western warships.

ODIN laser mounted on USS Stockdale - Source: TheDrive

This offensive advantage also supports the current evolution of the Russian Navy. Russia's declining economy limits its shipbuilding capabilities. It shipyards have yet to build a new class of destroyers or cruisers. Its shipbuilding industry is limited to building frigates and corvettes, supported by the modernization of Soviet era destroyers and cruisers. But, as the Tsirkon missile has a higher change of successfully penetrating NATO air defense systems, smaller warships carrying less missiles could actually just be as effective their larger Soviet era class destroyers and cruisers if not more effective. As such, Russia can afford to build smaller warships with less vertical launch cells compared to western designs without sacrificing its naval warfare capabilities. Smaller warships also cost less than larger ones so the Tsirkon missile allows Russia to, relatively, limit its naval spending. If not, Russia would be forced to either increase its shipbuilding budget and further, stressing the economy, or settle for less warships and see their naval capabilities being reduced.

Eventually air defense systems will catch up and counter hypersonic missiles but this is estimated to take one to two decades before the technology is fully developed and matured. The Tsirkon missile thus buys Russia one to two decades time during which it can put its economy in order so it can support the construction and operation of larger warships. This explains in part why Russia is currently pouring so much money in its military development. If they develop new weapon systems and their platforms now, while their economy is still capable of sustaining that development, afterwards they will have a period of time where they can focus their economy on civil development without having to compromise on their military strength.

The success of the Tsirkon missile only makes sense if it can be deployed at sea successfully during naval combat. Smaller warships have less defensive weapon systems mounted on them, making them vulnerably to already existing weaponry like naval aircraft and anti-ship missiles. Hence the role of operating with support of land based assets and the need to modernize the larger Soviet era warships which can provide the necessary defensive capabilities against a hostile air and missile strike. The modernized Kirov class battlecruiser RFS Admiral Nakhimov will be the most powerful air defense vessel in the current Russian Navy.

The long range of the Tsirkon missile allows Russia to strike western naval task forces from a distance but it needs reliable target information provided by either submarines, (near) real-time satellite surveillance and reconnaissance flights by land base maritime patrol aircraft. In fact, in the future, the Russian Navy requires the need for striking first as its smaller ship are unlikely to survive a hostile first strike. The success of the Tsirkon missile can in time also be turned against the Russian Navy. Should western navies develop their own hypersonic anti-ship missiles, they could force Russia to spend billions in developing their own countermeasures against hypersonic missiles.