Russia's much-hyped unstoppable hypersonic Kinzhal missile has met its match in the latest Patriot systems with 6 Kinzhal missiles being shot out of the sky in short order near Kyviv. Considering that these missiles cost about $10m each this must have Putin crying into his vodka.

The latest Russian and Chinese missiles have been claimed to be unstoppable and threaten to take out US supercarriers. However, hypersonic missiles have several vulnerabilities.

1. Traveling at hypersonic speeds generates a skin temperature on the missile over 1000C to 2000C and can be seen from a hundred miles away by AWACs, giving ships plenty of time to shoot them down.
2. Above Mach 7 the air starts to turn to plasma which interferes with accurate navigation which means that these missiles are either very inaccurate or need to slow to below Mach 5. (which Kinzhal does).

What this means is that Russia's vaunted weapon has been defanged and the US carriers are largely safe.

In the interim, the US missile development has been focused on making their missiles stealthy to fly just above the water at supersonic speeds with reduced radar and heat signatures.

Could Russia be just ridding itself of crims & out of date weapons at this stage ?

The point is that the Russians and Chinese have been posturing about how they have these new game-changing weapons. The reality is that they are not game-changing at all.

posturing about how they have these new game-changing weapons
Shadowminister,
I just pray we don’t reach the point where they could possibly back up that posturing !
I simply go by what I see in pictures by way of infrastructure, tourism facilities & sheer number of whatever they have created. The most outstanding being the discipline & commitment of its people to their Nation. Anyone thinking of how things work there should seriously think of how this World would be if it had 1.4 Billion Westerners in one Nation. Try to think if there were a Billion Australians.

Aha what a joke.

You bought into the sales pitch shadow minister
The entire Patriot v's Kinzhal was just a lie and narrative to create a context for support for further weapons shipments.

Russia blew up a Patriot missile system several days ago.
- Just as I said they would.

They're even talking about it on CNN.
http://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/16/politics/patriot-missile-damage-ukraine/index.html

Russia sent a wave of decoys in,
Patriot system started firing on those decoys
Kinzhal destroyed the Patriot.
And Ukrainian SBU arrested the 6 Ukrainians connected to the release of the footage.
Have you seen the footage?
http://twitter.com/squatsons/status/1658309419179081729

Blew up a huge Ukrainian Ammo dump in Khmelnitsky as well,
(just as I also said they would)
Big Explosions.
Half a billion dollars worth of US / NATO / Western supplied weapons went up apparently.
Some say there were UK supplied depleted Uranium tank rounds there as well.

Well so much for the Great Ukrainian Spring Counter Offensive.
- Springs almost over, better luck next year...

Russia is highly unlikely to be a threat to Australia, but China certainly is, and it might not need weapons of any sort.

Sun-Tzu wrote of the  possibility of defeating an enemy without firing a shot. Something for Australia, and other  democratic countries that take in immigrants and engage in free trade to think about. 

The Chinese Communist Party has already achieved a strong  interest in Australia;  a substantial  population of ethnic Chinese is growing steadily, and are so comfortable in their local communities that they do not bother to learn English. Australia  has accepted CCP  investment, foolishly believing that it is just normal investing, when the CCP is less interested in making money than it is in gaining ownership and control. Mining, farming, food processing, communications, water rights   - are just some of the CCP targets, along with port management and tourism. Once the CCP gets its hands on these enterprises, it is hard, if not impossible, for weak and gullible Australian governments to get them back. 

Weaponry could be the least of our worries.