Russia Test Fires Supersonic Missiles at Target in Sea of Japan

The ministry said on Tuesday that two ships launched a missile attack on a simulated enemy warship located about 100km (62 miles) away. Two Moskit supersonic cruise missiles that have conventional and nuclear warhead capacity, successfully hit their target, the ministry said, Al Jazeera reported.

“In the waters of the Sea of Japan, missile ships of the Pacific Fleet fired Moskit cruise missiles at a mock enemy sea target,” the ministry said in a statement on its Telegram account on Tuesday.

“The target, located at a distance of about 100 kilometers (62.14 miles), was successfully hit by a direct hit from two Moskit cruise missiles,” it added.

The P-270 Moskit missile, which has the NATO reporting name SS-N-22 Sunburn, is a medium-range supersonic cruise missile of Soviet origin and is capable of destroying a ship within a range of up to 120km (75 miles).

The Russian navy’s missile firing exercise comes a week after two Russian strategic bomber planes, capable of carrying nuclear weapons, flew over the Sea of Japan for more than seven hours in what Moscow said was a “planned flight”.

Russia’s defense ministry said the exercise on Tuesday took place in Peter the Great Bay in the Sea of Japan, but it did not give more precise coordinates, according to the Associated Press.

Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said his country would stay vigilant against Moscow’s military operations, while adding that no damage had been reported after the missile launches.

The announcement of the weapon’s test follows just weeks after Moscow reported that a Russian submarine in the Sea of Japan had hit a land target more than 1,000km (620 miles) away with a Kalibr cruise missile in a drill.

Russia, locked in a decades-old territorial dispute with Tokyo over a chain of Pacific islands, said an undisclosed number of its Pacific Fleet ships, jets and drones were also involved in the drill, securing the perimeter.