Kyiv, Ukraine – The collective West fears Moscow’s new, nuclear-powered cruise missile because it can bypass the most sophisticated air and missile defense systems and reach anywhere on Earth, the Russian Foreign Ministry has claimed.
“They are afraid of what we will show them next,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the RIA Novosti news agency on Sunday.
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A few days ago, she said Moscow was forced to develop and test a cruise missile, dubbed the Burevestnik, meaning storm petrel – a type of seabird, in response to NATO’s hostility towards Russia.
Itar-Tas news agency quoted her as saying, “Development can be described as forced and done to maintain strategic balance. Russia “A Response to NATO’s Increasingly Destabilizing Actions in the Missile Defense Sector”.
In much fanfare, Russian President Vladimir Putin presented the state award to Burevestnik’s developers on Tuesday.
The award was also given to the designers of the Poseidon, an underwater nuclear-powered torpedo that Putin claimed had been successfully tested.
Russia says the Poseidon could carry a nuclear warhead that could cause a radioactive tsunami and destroy a huge coastline. The “super torpedo” can travel at speeds of up to 200km/h (120mph) and zigzag its path to avoid obstacles, it said.
“In terms of flight range, Burevestnik … surpasses all known missile systems in the world,” Putin said in his speech at the Kremlin. “Like other nuclear powers, Russia is developing its nuclear capabilities, its strategic capabilities … what we’re talking about now is work that was announced a long time ago.”
But military and nuclear experts remain skeptical of the new weapons’ effectiveness and lethality.
It is not unusual for Russia to show off its arsenal as its offensive continues in Ukraine. Analysts say that rather than scare off its critics, Moscow’s announcements are merely a scare tactic to dissuade Western powers from supporting Kiev.
“There is nothing revolutionary in Burevestnik,” said Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.
“It can fly far and wide and there’s something new about it, but there’s nothing to back up (Putin’s claim) that it can completely change everything,” Podvig told Al Jazeera. “No one can say that he is invincible and can conquer everything.”
The trial of Burevestnik is part of the tactics of the Moscow media, when the real situation Front lines in Ukraine According to the former Russian diplomat, is hopeless.
The missile is “not a technological breakthrough but a product of propaganda and desperation”, wrote Boris Bondarev, who quit his Russian Foreign Ministry job to protest a 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in an opinion piece published by the Moscow Times.
“It’s a sign not of strength but of weakness — the Kremlin’s lack of any means of political influence other than threats.”
Some details about the ‘Unique’ missile
The problem is that officials have so far revealed very little about the Burevestnik, which NATO has dubbed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall — a missile that has a nuclear reactor and is capable of staying in the air indefinitely.
On October 26, when Putin announced the successful test of Burevestnik, 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 km (8,700 miles) in 15 hours during a recent test. It can maneuver and move in the air and release its nuclear payload with “guaranteed accuracy” and “at any distance”.
“There is a lot of work ahead” before mass production of the missile, Putin concluded, adding that the test’s “main goals have been achieved”.
A Ukrainian military expert scoffed at the Kremlin’s claim.
“Most of the news is false, the (Burevestnik) missile is subsonic, it can be detected and destroyed by missile defense systems,” Lt. Gen. Ihor Romanenko, a former deputy chief of Ukraine’s armed forces who specializes in air and missile defense, told Al Jazeera.
As for the Poseidon nuclear drone, it is too destructive — and can only be used as a second-strike, retaliatory weapon after a nuclear war breaks out, experts warn. As with Burevestnik, the lack of detailed information about Poseidon casts doubt on the Kremlin’s claims.
Trump condemned the ‘improper’ tests
These announcements were followed by Washington scraping United States President Donald Trump’s summit with Putin in Budapest, Hungary.
Trump called Burevestnik’s trial “improper” and ordered the Pentagon Start again Testing of nuclear weapons and missiles.
But before next year’s midterm elections, he may try to show how he has forced the Kremlin to end hostilities in Ukraine.
“Trump has to play pressure on Russia,” Romanenko said. “Hopefully, the situation will force Trump to take action.”
What Putin did not mention is that of Burevestnik’s dozens of tests launched in 2019, only two have been successful.
At least five nuclear experts died after a radioactive explosion at a 2019 launch near the White Sea in northwestern Russia, Western experts said at the time. Russia’s state nuclear agency acknowledged the death, but officials and media reports did not provide video footage, detailed photos or other details of Burevestnik and its test route — making it difficult to confirm or deny Putin’s latest claims.
Western experts were able to identify Burevestnik’s potential deployment site in September. Known as Vologda-20 or Chebsara, it is believed to be 475 km (295 miles) north of Moscow and has nine launch pads under construction, Reuters news agency reported last year.
The missile’s capabilities have divided military analysts.
“In operation, the Burevestnik will carry a nuclear warhead (or warheads), orbit the globe at low altitude, avoid missile defenses and evade terrain; and drop the warhead(s) at a predictable location (or locations),” the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a US nonprofit security group, said in its first report on the missile test after a successful 2019 test.
A year later, the US Air Force’s National Air and Space Intelligence Center said the Burevestnik, if brought into service, would give Moscow “a unique weapon with intercontinental-range capability”.
‘Burevestnik is a mystery’
Others doubt the missile’s effectiveness.
“Burevestnik has been a mystery for seven and a half years since it was first announced,” Pavel Luzin, a visiting scholar at Tufts University in Massachusetts, told Al Jazeera.
“It is impossible to build a compact and powerful nuclear reactor to ensure the movement of a cruise missile,” said Luzhin. “This is a textbook of basic physics.”
Moscow claims that the Burevestnik uses nuclear propulsion instead of the turbojet or turbofan engines used in cruise or ballistic missiles.
But Luzhin said the smallest nuclear reactors used to power satellites weigh 1 metric ton, providing several kilowatts of energy – about the same as a typical house uses – emitting about 150kw of thermal energy.
Experimental nuclear reactors developed in the 1950s and 60s for aircraft weighed several tons and were about the size of a railroad carriage.
An average cruise missile engine weighs up to 80kg, generates 4kw for onboard electric and electronic equipment and about 1 MW to propel the missile, he said.
Other analysts think Burevestnik’s nuclear engine could work, but don’t consider the weapon groundbreaking.