Russia said on Monday that it had conducted another successful test flight of its Zircon hypersonic cruise missile, which President Vladimir Putin has praised as part of a new generation of unrivaled weapons systems.
The missile was launched from the Admiral Gorshkov destroyer in the White Sea and struck a naval target more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) distant, according to the defense ministry, in its second test in two weeks.
A brief video clip shows the rocket emitting a blast of white light into the night sky.
The United States, China and North Korea are also involved in the contest to hypersonic missiles, the next generation of long-range weapons that are harder to detect and intercept. They travel at more than five times the speed of sound in the upper atmosphere, or around 6,200 km/hour (3,850 mph).
Putin announced an array of new hypersonic weapons in 2018, saying they could hit almost any point in the world and evade a U.S.-built missile shield.