The Ministry of Defense of the russian federation announced that on December 3, 2024, russia conducted exercises in the Mediterranean Sea with the launch of various types of missiles. All the ships of the russian Navy's grouping stationed in Tartus were involved in the exercise. This explains the reports of the alleged first signs that russians may leave this Syrian base.
What is unusual about this story is that russians showed for the first time a close-up launch of the Zircon hypersonic missile, which was carried out from two Project 22350 frigates.
Read more: russia Deployed 60 North Korean KN-23 Missiles Against Ukraine
Published photos of the launches raise many questions. For instance, the authors of The War Zone write that, according to some analysts, footage by the Ministry of Defense of the russian federation showing the launch of the Zircon during exercises in the Mediterranean Sea in December 2024 may be a montage of previous episodes of test launches.
Moreover, russians also published close-up footage of the missile launch after one of the test launches of Zircon in 2020 from the White Sea. Therefore, the relevant archival material may be at the russian disposal.
In addition, the footage shown by the russian Ministry of Defense has sparked debate among Western analysts that the Zircon missile is actually based on the P-800 Oniks supersonic anti-ship cruise missile. However, it is difficult to say what their assumptions are based on.
As Defense Express, we would like to highlight the importance of the type of ships from which russians launched the Zircon near Syria, namely the Project 22350 frigates. As they officially admit, the two ships of this project had to be modernized separately to turn them into Zircon carriers.
russia has not officially disclosed the nature of the modernization of these frigates. It can be assumed that this modification affected the vertical launchers for missile launches (each ship has 16 launchers).
All these details are important because they clearly show that the number of Zircon surface carriers in the russian fleet is limited, as well as this hypersonic missile can hardly be deployed on other russian missile ships with 3S-14 missile launchers.
There is no publicly available footage of P-800 Oniks missiles being launched from surface ships. This is actually strange, since russians declared the possibility of launching such missiles from 3S-14 launchers, which are used on missile corvettes of the Project 21631 Buyan-M and Project 22800 Karakurt, as well as on 11356 project frigates. The absence of such footage does not provide the necessary material for comparison with the Zircon launch from surface ships.
Against this backdrop, there is an assumption that russians may have exaggerated in their statements, while the P-800 Oniks is not adapted for launching from 3S-14. The question also arises regarding the specific nature of the modifications required to modernize the Project 22350 frigates for the role of Zircon carriers.
Earlier Defense Express reported that Ukraine’s naval srones had shut down russia’s Syrian express in March 2024.
Read more: Ukrainian Intelligence Reveals russia's Annual Production Rate of Rubezh or Oreshnik Ballistic Missiles
