A Russian frigate outfitted with hypersonic Zircon missiles will take part in joint exercises in South Africa in February, TASS reports.
Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency said, a warship outfitted with hypersonic cruise missiles will participate in joint exercises with the navies of China and South Africa in February.
The participation of the Russian frigate Admiral Gorshkov of the Fleet of the Soviet Union was first mentioned in an official report on Monday.
The frigate is equipped with Zircon missiles, which have a range of more than 1,000 km and can travel at nine times the speed of sound (620 miles).
The missiles and the Avangard glide vehicle, which entered combat service in 2019, are the centerpiece of Russia’s hypersonic arsenal.
“‘Admiral Gorshkov’ … will go to the logistic support point in Syria’s Tartus, and then take part in joint naval exercises with the Chinese and South African navies,” TASS said in its report, citing an unidentified defence source.
The South African National Defence Force has said the drills will run from February 17-26 near the port cities of Durban and Richards Bay on South Africa’s east coast.
It said on Thursday that the joint exercise aims “to strengthen the already flourishing relations between South Africa, Russia and China”.
The exercise will be the second involving the three countries in South Africa, after a drill in 2019, the defence force added.
The Gorshkov held exercises in the Norwegian Sea earlier this month after President Vladimir Putin sent it to the Atlantic Ocean in a signal to the West that Russia would not back down over the war in Ukraine.
Putin has previously said the frigate and its Zircon missiles have “no analogues in the world”.
The Russian president sees the weapons as a way to pierce the United States’s increasingly sophisticated missile defences.
Russia, the US and China are in a race to develop hypersonic weapons, seen as a way to gain an edge over any adversary because of their speed and their manoeuvrability, features which make them harder to detect.