Yesterday Lenta.ru relayed an Interfaks item in which NPO Mashinostroyeniye General Director Aleksandr Leonov said Russia is working on a naval hypersonic cruise missile. But, he said:
“It’s difficult to say when all this will be turned into metal. But technically today I don’t see obstacles to this direction being realized this decade.”
Leonov also claimed that development of this missile is included in GPV 2011-2020. He didn’t talk about the characteristics of the missile, but said the general trend is to increase its speed to hypersonic, not to increase its range. It’s designed for anti-ship and land attack missions, and will be fired from various launch platforms.
Leonov noted that today up to 80 percent of Russian Navy cruise missiles were developed by NPO Mashinostroyeniye. It produced both the Granit (SS-N-19) and Bazalt (SS-N-12) ASCMs.
He didn’t mention that the hypersonic missile development’s being done as part of Russia’s BrahMos joint venture with India. Some sources claim the BrahMos II cruise missile has surpassed Mach 5 in stand testing.
Russian Defense Policy 