KH-22 Missile:
Ukraine Air Force spokesperson recently disclosed that the country’s air defense units were unable to shot down any of the Kh-22 supersonic cruise missiles launched by Russia.
- KH-22 Missile is a Soviet-era long-range airborne supersonic cruise missile.
- Armed with a nuclear or highly explosive fragmenting cumulative warhead, it was initially designed to destroy aircraft carriers and other large warships, or even groups of such carriers.
- The Kh-22 family was developed in the USSR in the 1960s and specifically designed to be launched from Tupolev-22 bombers.
- Later, both the missiles and the aircraft were modernized as part of the so-called “Kh-22 special air-to-surface missile complex.”
- Upgraded in the 1970s, the missile had an impressive speed of 4,000 kilometers per hour, a 1,000-kilogram warhead, and a range of 500 kilometers.
- It weighs 5,820 kilograms.
- A total of approximately 3,000 such missiles were produced in the USSR.
- After the USSR collapsed, quite a few of them remained in Ukraine. However, soon after independence in 1991, Ukraine gave up its nuclear and strategic aviation arsenal.
- In 2000, Ukraine transferred 386 Kh-22 missiles to Russia as an installment against the gas debt.
- The successor to the Kh-22 became the Kh-32, which can be carried by the new Russian Tu-22M3M bombers.
- The new missile features a conventional warhead, an improved rocket motor, and a new radar imaging terminal seeker.
- It has a longer range but a smaller warhead.
