KYIV, UKRAINE – The entire Western world fears Moscow’s new nuclear-powered cruise missile because it can bypass the most sophisticated air and missile defense systems and reach anywhere on the planet, the Russian Foreign Ministry has claimed.
“They are afraid of what we can show them next,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RIA Novosti news agency on Sunday.
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A few days earlier, she said that in response to NATO’s hostility towards Russia, Moscow was “forced” to develop and test a cruise missile named Burevestnik, which means petrel, a type of seabird.
“The development is compulsory and will be done to maintain strategic balance,” he was quoted as saying by the Itar-Tass news agency. Russia “must respond to NATO’s increasingly destabilizing actions in the missile defense field.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin handed over the state award to Burevestnik’s developers on Tuesday with great pomp.
The designers of the Poseidon underwater nuclear torpedo, which President Putin claims has been successfully tested, also received the award.
Russia claims Poseidon can carry a nuclear weapon that could cause a radioactive tsunami and devastate vast coastal areas. The “super torpedo” can travel at speeds of up to 200 kilometers per hour (120 miles per hour) and zigzag to avoid interception.
“In terms of flight range, Burevestnik… exceeds all known missile systems in the world,” Putin said in a speech in the Kremlin. “Like other nuclear powers, Russia is developing its nuclear potential and its strategic potential…What we are talking about now is an effort that was announced a long time ago.”
However, military and nuclear experts are skeptical about the efficiency and lethality of the new weapons.
As the onslaught continues in Ukraine, it is not unusual for Russia to show off its weapons. Analysts say the Kremlin’s announcement is more of a scare tactic to dissuade Western countries from supporting Kiev, rather than scaring critics.
“There is nothing revolutionary about Burevestnik,” said Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.
“It can fly long and far, there is some novelty, but there is nothing to support[Putin’s claim]that it can change absolutely everything,” Podvig told Al Jazeera. “You can’t say you’re invincible and can overcome everything.”
A former Russian diplomat said the Burevestnik test was part of Russia’s media strategy to intimidate the West at a time when the real situation on the Ukrainian front was desperate.
Boris Bondarev, who quit his job at Russia’s Foreign Ministry to protest against a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, wrote in an op-ed published by the Moscow Times that the missile is “not a technological advance, but a product of propaganda and desperation.”
“This represents weakness, not strength. The Kremlin has no means of political influence other than intimidation.”
Few details about the ‘unique’ missile
The problem is that officials have so far revealed little about the Burevestnik, which NATO has named SSC-X-9 Skyfall. Burevestnik is a missile equipped with a nuclear reactor that is said to be able to remain airborne indefinitely.
On October 26, when a weary-clad President Putin announced the success of the Burevestnik test, he was accompanied by his top general, Valery Gerasimov.
“This is a unique item. No one else in the world has it,” Putin said in televised remarks.
Gerasimov said Burevestnik flew 14,000 kilometers (8,700 miles) in 15 hours in a recent test. It can maneuver and loiter in the air and fire nuclear bombs from “any distance” with “guaranteed accuracy.”
Putin concluded that “a lot of work remains” before the missile can go into mass production, adding that the “main objective” of the test had been achieved.
Ukrainian military experts scoffed at the Kremlin’s claims.
“Many of the reports are fabricated, the (Burevestnik) missile is subsonic and can be detected and destroyed by missile defense systems,” Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, a former deputy chief of the Ukrainian military staff specializing in air and missile defense, told Al Jazeera.
As for the Poseidon nuclear drone, experts have warned that it is too destructive and can only be used as a secondary strike or retaliatory weapon after the outbreak of nuclear war. As with Burevestnik, the lack of detailed information about Poseidon casts doubt on the Kremlin’s claims.
President Trump slams ‘inappropriate’ testing
The announcement followed Washington’s cancellation of a summit between US President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, Hungary.
President Trump called the Burevestnik test “inappropriate” and ordered the Pentagon to resume testing nuclear weapons and missiles.
But ahead of next year’s midterm elections, the president may seek to prove how he forced the Kremlin to cease hostilities in Ukraine.
“Trump will have to put pressure on Russia,” Romanenko said. “I hope the situation forces Mr. Trump to act.”
What Putin doesn’t mention is that of the dozen or so Burevestnik experiments that began in 2019, only two were successful.
It was fired in 2019 near the White Sea in northwestern Russia, killing at least five nuclear experts in a radioactive explosion, Western experts said at the time. Russia’s state nuclear agency confirmed the death, but officials and media reports have not provided video footage, detailed photos or other details of Burevestnik and its test route, making it difficult to support or disprove Putin’s latest claims.
Western experts were able to identify the planned deployment site for Burevestnik in September. The rocket, known as Vologda-20 or Chevsara, is believed to be located 475 kilometers (295 miles) north of Moscow, where nine launch pads are under construction, Reuters reported last year.
Military analysts are divided on the missile’s capabilities.
“During operation, Burevestnik would carry a nuclear warhead, orbit the Earth at low altitude, evade missile defenses, circumvent terrain, and drop warheads in difficult-to-predict locations,” the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a U.S. nonprofit security organization, said in a 2019 report after the missile’s first tests were somewhat successful.
A year later, the U.S. Air Force National Aerospace Information Center said that if operational, Burevestnik would give Moscow “a unique weapon with intercontinental range capabilities.”
“Brevestnik is a mystery”
Some question the missile’s functionality.
“Burevestnik has remained a mystery for seven and a half years since it was first announced,” Pavel Luzhin, a visiting researcher at Tufts University in Massachusetts, told Al Jazeera.
“It is impossible to create a nuclear reactor that is compact and powerful enough to ensure the movement of cruise missiles,” Luzin said. “This is a basic physics textbook.”
Moscow claims that Burevestnik uses nuclear propulsion instead of the turbojet or turbofan engines used in cruise and ballistic missiles.
But Luzin said the smallest nuclear reactors used to power satellites weigh one tonne and provide several kilowatts of energy, roughly equivalent to the consumption of a typical household, while emitting about 150 kilowatts of thermal energy.
He said experimental nuclear reactors developed for aircraft in the 1950s and 1960s weighed several tons and were about the size of railroad cars.
He said the average engine for a cruise missile weighs up to 80 kg and generates 4 kW for the onboard electrical and electronic equipment and about 1 MW of energy to propel the missile.
Other analysts believe Burevestnik’s nuclear engine could work, but do not consider the weapon revolutionary.
