Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)


Deception Warning !! - KRND Burevestnik [Petrel] SSC-X-9 Skyfall

There are good grounds to believe that this project is, in whole or in part, a strategic deception by Russia [Maskirovka in Russian parlance], to gain the benefits of developing and deploying such a weapon without enduring the costs and hazards that an actual program would entail.

  1. Russia has a national history of strategic deception, surely dating to the Potemkin Villages of the 1780s. More recently, a series of Red Square parade deceptions in the early years of the Cold War helped fuel The Bomber Gap and the Missile Gap. This is not to say that the Russians are uniquely deceptive. All clandestine and covert operations entail deceptions. Classified weapons programs are by their nature deceptive in restricting the publicaion of information, and highly classified programs would typically have a cover story to further confuse the inquisitive.

  2. Deputy Prime Minister, Yuri Ivanovich Borisov appointed in May 2018, who was responsible for defense issues, had been pretty explicit in advocating a Khrushchev-style strategic deception campaign to facilitate reduced military spending.

  3. The Burevestnik was unveiled at Putin's March 2018 show and tell that was substantially deceptive.

  4. Moscow has never released a photograph of anything that was unambiguously an atomic powered cruise missile - the few images released in conjunction with this project are generic cruise missiles, with no functionally related observable differences indicating nuclear propulsion.

  5. It is reported that by mid-2018 tests were conducted four times, from November 2017 to February 2018. In all four cases, the test ended in failure. The longest of the tests lasted about two minutes. The rocket flew about 35 kilometers and fell, according to TASS. These numbers are about what one would expect from the solid rocket motor booster stage, with a complete failure of the nuclear power plant to function. According to another source, as of early 2019 only one of 13 known tests of the missile had been moderately successful to date. This is backwards. The US conducted a number of ground tests of Pluto, and they generally "worked". The scenario here is that the Russians are tossing the thing into the air on the off chance that it might work.

  6. No one has offered a coherent concept of what this thing is supposed to look like. The Pluto reactor was quite large relative to current GLCMs, and there are physics limits to how small the things can be made. It is not simply a question of the core, but all the stuff that the core is wrapped in. The naive notion is that one can just take a GLCM, and replace the small turbofan with a reactor, but it probably doesn't think it works that way. It is plausible that the Burevestnik is big, along the lines of Navaho or Buran, but no one has suggested this.

  7. If there was indeed a launch site flight accident on 08 August 2019 with the SSC-X-9 as popularly conceived, the reactor would have been cold, or very nearly cold, else the missile would be off the test range and over water. Either way, it is hard to see how there would have been a fatal radiological accident. There could have been such an accident in conjunction with a ground test, but ground testing of the SKYFALL is not previously attested at this site, and would have almost certainly been conducted at some regular polygon out in the boonies, for safety reasons.

  8. TASS quoted Rosatom "The rocket tests were carried out on the offshore platform. After the tests were completed, the rocket fuel ignited, followed by detonation." Possibly this was a ground test, and the reactor was contaminated. But generating the air flow needed to simulate fight conditions was a major challenge for Pluto, and required a pretty vast installation that is not in evidence. A more parsimonious explaation for this event is that it involved the large unmanned underwater vehicle publicy identified as Status-6 Torpedo "Poseidon" Kanyon/ which is probably a cover story for an autonomous UUV component of theHarmony ASW surviellance network.

  9. By mid-2024, the publicly available information about Burevestnaik consisted of a numbre of unsseccessful flight tests, none of which apperaed to involve operation of a nuslear reactor.

In August 2019, Foreign Policy cited the opinion of military experts Michael Kofman (director of the Russian studies program at the American Center for Naval Analysis (CNA)) and Ian Williams (deputy director of the missile defense project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies), who were skeptical about that Russia has the technical and financial capabilities to successfully complete the project. So Ian Williams said: "Maybe they throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks and what doesn't, but I don't think anything can stick."

Military and political analyst Dmytro Snegiryov talked about the cruise missile 05 October 2023, on the air of FREEDOM TV channel. “Putin was presented with an idea that was tried to be implemented back in the 50s, but then such developments were recognized as unpromising, and they were postponed forever. It is noteworthy that in the 50s, a similar development was called “Storm”. Therefore, obviously, the Russians decided to remind the Western countries about the so-called nuclear blackmail,” he believes.

The expert noted that Russia’s propaganda in every possible way spreads the information that Western countries do not have such weapons. “According to the Russian side, this missile is about 12 m long and allegedly capable of carrying a megaton charge. That is, in fact, it is a strategic nuclear weapon. The Russian side is spreading the version that Western countries will not actually be able to resist this type of weaponry. Moreover, the Russian side insists that it will be an allegedly unlimited range of damage – up to 3,000 km,” he said.

Snigiriev is sure that the statement about the successful test of this type of missile is a political bluff. “Out of 13 launches of the “Peter’s Storm”, none was successful. Work began in 2001, and the development of this project has been ongoing for 22 years. It has not actually been implemented yet. This is an indicator of the failure of the Russian military-industrial complex (MIC). In 5 years, they were not able to actually launch anything into a series, but to conduct a successful test of this type of weapon. Therefore, apparently, it is a so-called political bluff,” he explained.

Russian propaganda is trying to sell at least some achievements on the domestic market, because there are none on the battlefield, the expert noted. “The Russian Federation is trying to maintain a good image for a bad game, fully understanding that it is necessary to sell something at least to the domestic, not to mention the external, consumer. There are no real successes on the battle line. Moreover, the Russian side is forced to recognize the successful nature of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, and in order to somehow minimize ideological and political losses, they get a project from the 1950s, with which they are trying to scare the entire civilized world,” he summarized.

The new Russian cruise missile Burevestnik, which Putin boasted of successfully testing, is not a superweapon. In general, it is doubtful that the Russian Federation has a missile with the declared technical characteristics. Most likely, “successful tests of the Burevestnik” are needed to please Putin and distract the Russian audience from the unsuccessful actions of the Russian army in Ukraine. Military expert Oleksiy Hetman stated this live on the FREEDOM TV channel.

He noted that there is nothing new in attempts to create a nuclear-powered cruise missile. This is a development from the times of the USSR. Similar ones were carried out in the USA, but were stopped due to their futility. As for nuclear power plants, they have been successfully used for a long time. “Remember the icebreaker Lenin? The Soviet Union was very proud that they made an icebreaker with a nuclear engine. It’s not complicated in itself, but, firstly, it’s heavy, and secondly, it requires cooling,” noted the guest on the broadcast.

Getman doubts that effective technical solutions are possible to equip a fairly small cruise missile with such an engine. The expert has even more questions about the effectiveness of the missiles themselves. “It will be heavier than a rocket with a conventional jet engine. If it’s heavier, it will fly slower and won’t be as maneuverable. And the main advantage of a cruise missile is not its speed, but its ability to maneuver,” he says.

According to Getman, even if we assume that such a rocket has been created, it is not clear what it is needed for. “A nuclear engine can operate for quite a long time. Theoretically, a missile can fly and stay in the air for months, which means that it can cover a huge distance… The most important question is: why does a cruise missile that flies at subsonic speed need a flight range of 7-8-10 thousand km. In order to achieve a goal – for example, Russia wants to attack, God forbid, the United States of America with such a missile – the missile at this speed will fly to the United States for 7-8 hours. Obviously, during this time it will be detected, and it will be easy to shoot it down, intercept it, without even straining too much… Why make a rocket that will fly 10 hours to the target?” — the broadcast guest asks a rhetorical question.

In his opinion, the missile was announced in order, firstly, to please Putin with the fact that the Russian Federation supposedly has another weapon that “has no analogues.” Secondly, to scare the world again. And, thirdly, to divert the attention of people, including within the Russian Federation, from the unsuccessful actions of the Russian army at the front. As previously reported, according to military-political analyst Dmytro Snegirev, the statement about testing the Burevestnik cruise missile is a political bluff. Since 2001, out of 13 Burevestnik launches, not one has completed successfully. They tried to implement the very idea of such a rocket back in the 1950s, but then such developments were considered unpromising and were shelved.



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