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14K168 Burevestnik

The Burevestnik “space complex” which has the index 14K168, according to Bart Hendrickx "is an umbrella name for an ASAT program that includes both space-based and non-space-based elements", similar to the Soviet-era Kontakt “direct-ascent air-launched ASAT. The Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile has nothing to do with the Burevestnik ASAT project, apart from the name, which is very popular in Russia, like Almaz, etc.

The space-based portion of the project was then officially initiated by a contract signed between NPK KBM and the Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics (CNIIHM) on 30 September 2011. Follow-up contracts awarded by CNIIHM to other subcontractors clearly are for a space-based system that itself seems to have two components (Burevestnik-M and Burevestnik-KA-M). The indexes 14D812, 14D813 and 14S47. These are presumably the first, second and third stages of the rocket.

Burevestnik project also has a ground-based component, namely what appears to be a three-stage solid-fuel rocket built by NPO Iskra in the city of Perm (some 1000 km east of Moscow near the Ural mountains).

The Soviet Union studied the possibility of launching anti-satellite missiles from a conventional high-altitude interceptor fighter. As a result, by 1983, a sketch of the MiG-31D aircraft was born - a deep modernization of the serial MiG-31 interceptor. Already in 1985, construction drawings were transferred to the plant to create prototypes. The prototype aircraft was created on the basis of a production aircraft using individual technical solutions implemented on the modernized MiG-31M. The main weapon was a ten-meter 79M6 rocket, located on the central retractable ventral pylon. As a result, the weapons control system and the on-board flight navigation system had to be completely redesigned for this missile. It seemed that the history of the MiG-31D interceptors had come to an end. However, on August 11, 2009, the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force, Colonel General Alexander Nikolaevich Zelin, suddenly announced that the air-launched anti-satellite system was “being revived to solve the same problems.” And in September 2018, the Internet was flooded with photos of a MiG-31 aircraft with an overall weight model of a large missile on a sling. Many experts immediately began to write that this was nothing more than an anti-satellite weapon. It soon turned out that within the framework of the Burevestnik project, the 14K168 complex was actually being developed to destroy satellites in low orbits. The complex includes the MiG-31BM carrier aircraft (“product 08”), the 14A045 missile (“product 293”) and the Burevestnik-M interceptor vehicle. There is information that tests of interceptors are carried out separately from the carrier aircraft - at least four of them have been launched into orbit since December 2013 by conventional rockets under the names of satellites of the Cosmos series.