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KRND Burevestnik [Petrel] SSC-X-9 SKYFALL

In an address on 05 October 2023 that touched on topics such as nuclear weapons, energy, and the war in Ukraine, Putin also said that Russia had tested a new nuclear-powered missile delivery system– the Burevestnik – whose capabilities he had called unmatched. He announced that Russia has effectively completed the development of the Burevestnik cruise missile and the Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missile and will work on putting them into production. “We conducted the last successful test of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered global-range cruise missile,” he said. His statement was the first announcement of a successful test of the Burevestnik.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, at the end of 2017, a successful launch of the newest Russian cruise missile with a nuclear power plant took place at the Central Range of the Russian Federation. In the course of the flight, the power plant reached the set power level, provided the necessary level of thrust. The launch of the missile and a complex of ground tests allow proceeding to the creation of a fundamentally new type of weapons - a strategic complex of nuclear weapons with a missile equipped with a nuclear power plant. The range of the rocket is not limited, it can maneuver for any length of time, bypassing the defensive line.

Often in Russian and Western media, it is claimed that Petrel carries the 9M730 index, and its developer is Novator Design Bureau. But other Russian sources claim this is false data - that neither Novator, nor even the 9M730 index have any relation to Petrel.

The US intelligence community designated this system the SSC-X-9 [SSC = Surface to Surface Cruise missile, X for experimental], with the NATO rporting name SKYFALL [by convention, these names are always capitalized]. Surface to surface missile names begin with S - sometimes the names are ominous, eg SINNER or SATAN or STALIN, and other times meaningless, eg SEGO or SADDLER.

The word "skyfall” is not an English word - is is absent from CED, OED, and Merriam-Webster English Dictionary. Similar words with well understood meaning include downfall, landfall, pratfall, deadfall, rainfall, windfall, pitfall, icefall, nightfall, rockfall, shortfall, downfall, outfall, snowfall, dewfall, footfall, waterfall, and overfall, but not skyfall, which seems to be a neologism.

The word SKYFALL is the title of a spy movie - 23rd in the film series in the 50th year of the Bond franchise. Why would spies choose such a name? The James Bond film of this name, directed by Sam Mendes, was among the more ambitious imaginings of Bond to date. Skyfall was not "darker" or more serious than previous Bond films, but it's more knowing about its own conventions. There are many references to the old ways, which as it turns out is Bond. The plot works as an allegory for the character's return to the screen, with themese of obsolescence and decay. Bond in Skyfall loses often and poorly. The meaning of the title Skyfall takes its name from 007’s childhood home, Skyfall Lodge, in Scotland. Having been truly tested by fire, 007 has emerged reborn and recast in a new and purer form.

Some suggest the term derives from the Latin dictum "fiat justita ruat caelum" meaning roughly "Let justice be done though the sky falls". There is a Japanese word “kiyu” – an absurd fear or needless anxiety "worring about the fall of the sky,” which was borrowed from Chinese proverb, “Qi ren you tian” derived from the ancient story of the people of the Qi country very much worried about the sky falling on their heads suddenly.

In the West, there is the classic story of Chicken Little, who has an acorn fall on his head and runs in a panic to friends Lucky Ducky, and Loosey Goosey, to tell them the sky is falling. The phrase "The sky is falling!" features prominently in the story, and has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that great disaster is imminent.

In the "President's Address to the Federal Assembly" on 01 March 2018, Putin stated "Prospective weapons systems in Russia are based on the latest unique achievements of our scientists, designers, engineers. One of them is the creation of a small-sized superpower nuclear power plant, which is housed in a cruise missile like our latest X-101 missile, air-launched or American, Tomahawk, but at the same time it provides dozens of times! - agreater range of flight, which is practically unlimited. A low-flying, barely noticeable cruise missile carrying a nuclear warhead with practically unlimited range, unpredictable flight trajectory and the possibility of bypassing interception lines is invulnerable to all existing and prospective systems of both missile defense and air defense. These words I will pronounce today more than once.

"At the end of 2017, a successful launch of the newest Russian cruise missile with a nuclear power plant took place at the Central Range of the Russian Federation. In the course of the flight, the power plant reached the set power level, provided the necessary level of thrust. The launch of the missile and a complex of ground tests allow us to proceed to the creation of a fundamentally new type of weapons - a strategic complex of nuclear weapons with a missile equipped with a nuclear power plant."

At least one U.S. news report cited unnamed intelligence officials as saying a test model had even crashed recently in the Arctic. “It looks like they tested the thing. It's likely that the concept worked, but it is not clear how close it is to an actual [militarily useful] weapon,” Pavel Podvig, a Swiss-based researcher of Russian weaponry, told RFE/RL.

A cloud of radioactive pollution over Europe in late September 2017 likely originated from a nuclear facility in Russia or Kazakhstan, the French nuclear safety institute IRSN said. In an 09 November 2017 statement, IRSN ruled out an accident in a nuclear reactor, saying it was a likely leak in a nuclear fuel-treatment site or center for radioactive medicine. In recent weeks, IRSN and several other nuclear safety institutes in Europe had measured high levels of ruthenium 106, a radioactive nuclide which does not occur naturally and is the product of splitting atoms in a nuclear reactor. Because of its short half-life of about one year, ruthenium 106 is used in nuclear medicine.

There had been no impact on human health or the environment in Europe, said IRSN, the technical arm of the French nuclear regulator ASN, but it suggested random checks on food imports from the area where the cloud originated as a precaution. The IRSN statement said it could not accurately locate the release of radioactive material but, based on weather patterns, it most likely originated south of the Ural Mountains, between the Urals and the Volga River.

Representatives of Kazakhstan's Nuclear Physics Institute in Almaty told RFE/RL on 10 November 2017 that there were no nuclear leaks detected in Kazakhstan in September and October. Officials at the Kazakh Institute of Radiation Security and Ecology in the town of Kurchatov, in the East-Kazkahstan region, said Kazakhstan does not have facilities from which ruthenium may go into the air as the result of an accident.

IRSN estimated that the initial quantity of ruthenium 106 released was major, and that if an accident of this magnitude had happened in France it would have required the evacuation or sheltering of all the people in a radius of a few kilometers around the accident site.

In a paper published on 26 July 2019 in the journal PNAS, a team of more than seven dozen researchers said they had concluded that the origins of the "sizable, yet undeclared nuclear accident" appeared to be a nuclear reprocessing facility located in the Urals region. The researchers also said ruthenium isotopes had not been detected in the global atmosphere since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. They also said that, while the threat to human health in Europe was minimal, there may have been a more serious fallout closer to the origin of the release. "The Mayak nuclear complex in southern Urals should be considered as a likely candidate for the release," they wrote.

In a remark that was widely overlooked at the time, in the "President's Address to the Federal Assembly" on 01 March 2018, Putin stated "As you know, there is no such thing in the world yet. One day, probably, will appear, but during this time our guys will think of something else."

As part of the improvement of the design of the cruise missile with the nuclear engine "Burevestnik", preparations were under way for its flight test on 19 July 2018. Simultaneously, technical means of preparation and launching are being developed, technological processes of manufacturing, assembly and testing of the missile are being improved, said Sergei Pertsev, chief scientific researcher at the 12th Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense. "A low-flying, barely noticeable cruise missile carrying a nuclear warhead with virtually unlimited range, an unpredictable flight path and the possibility of circumvention of interception lines is invulnerable to all existing and prospective systems of both missile defense and air defense," the military department said. They stressed that the creation of a cruise missile is carried out in a planned manner.

Russia is preparing to conduct flight tests of prototypes of the cruise missile "Burevestnik" with a nuclear engine that will be able to fly to unlimited range. This was stated in a statement of the Ministry of Defense of Russia, which was placed at the disposal of RT 19 July 2019. "On the basis of the specified requirements, the design of the rocket components is improved, ground tests are conducted, and the flight tests of the experimental samples of the cruise missile of the improved design are conducted," the department informed. It is noted that the creation of a cruise missile of unlimited range is proceeding in a planned manner. As specified in the Ministry of Defense, at the same time is the development of technical means of preparation and launching, improving the technological processes of manufacturing, assembly and testing of the missile.

Russia is preparing for a special operation to find a missile that fell into the Barents Sea. This was reported by CNBC. The American television channel refers to intelligence data. Allegedly the missile with a nuclear power plant was lost during the tests in November 2017. The missile launches themselves were conducted four times, from November 2017 to February 2018. In all four cases, it ended in failure. The longest of the tests lasted about two minutes. The rocket flew about 35 kilometers and fell, according to TASS.

In the operation to find and lift the missile from the seabed, three vessels would be involved, one of them is equipped with equipment for working with radioactive substances. The date of the beginning of the operation is not reported. It is also unknown whether damage to human health or the environment is possible in connection with the alleged damage to the nuclear reactor of the missile. Meanwhile, information about the fall of the missile in the Barents Sea is not confirmed by the Council of Federation. "There is no information, I can not confirm, the first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security Eugene Serebrennikov told "Interfax".

Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine, in his turn, called the message of the American channel a purposeful information operation of the United States. According to him, it is timed to the opened forum "Army-2018" in order to discredit the new Russian developments, to sow doubts in them. According to the interlocutor of the agency, there is a high probability that behind the message of the American television channel are the structures of the Pentagon, which are responsible for information operations in cyberspace.

Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to international organizations in Vienna, Alexei Karpov, said 26 august 2019 that the tests at a military training ground near Severodvinsk were related to the development of weapons, which the Russian Federation began to create due to the US withdrawing from the ABM treaty. “I can add to those who are especially interested. The tests conducted at the military training ground on August 8 near Severodvinsk were related to the development of weapons, which we had to start creating as one of the retaliatory measures in connection with the US unilateral withdrawal from the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems in 2002 ( Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty), "said Karpov, speaking at the 53rd session of the working group on verification of the preparatory committee of the Organization of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBTO).

The CNBC report on allegedly unsuccessful tests of a Russian cruise missile with a nuclear power plant was not the first thing the television channel has done on this topic. At the end of May 2018, CNBC, citing familiar with the US intelligence report, sources published information according to which all tests conducted from November 2017 to February 2018 were unsuccessful. In particular, it was alleged that during the testing the nuclear power plant (the main one for such a missile) was not launched.

President's press secretary Dmitry Peskov in response to the CNBC report advised journalists to listen to the head of state and believe him.

According to U.S. military intelligence, only one of 13 known tests of the missile had been moderately successful through early 2019. The test on 29 January 2019 was partially successful, according to U.S. government sources who spoke to The Diplomat.

US intelligence believed that Russian missiles with the Burevestnik nuclear power plant will go into service by 2025, an earlier time than previous forecasts, CNBC reported 12 September 2019 citing sources aware of the US intelligence report. According to the channel, the tests of the Petrel were held once at the beginning of 2019, and before that - four more times from November 2017 to February 2018. Moreover, it is alleged that all tests ended in failure. The United States found that the longest test flight lasted a little over two minutes. Then the "Petrel" flew about 35 km, after which control over it was lost, and the test ended in the fall of a rocket. The shortest flight lasted four seconds, during which the Petrel flew about 8 km. It is assumed that during the tests failed to launch a nuclear power plant.

The 9M730 Burevestnik had a poor test record of at least 13 known tests, with only two partial successes, from 2016 to 2024, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). The President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, announced at the Valdai forum about the successful test of the Burevisnik nuclear-capable cruise missile. Since 2001, none of the 13 launches of “Burevisnyk” had been completed successfully, and this is an indicator of the failure of the military-industrial complex (MIC). In early February 2019, the American publications The Diplomat and Business Insider , based on unknown sources in US intelligence, announced the resumption of cruise missile tests at the Kapustin Yar test site; the tests were described as partially successful. In February 2019, Business Insider , commenting on the 13th test, stated that "the missile still does not function properly." Citing US intelligence, it is reported that only one test in all this time was successful. According to officially unconfirmed data from TASS, in January 2019, successful tests of the nuclear power plant for the Burevestnik cruise missile complex were conducted.

In October 2023, Vladimir Putin announced at a plenary session of the Valdai International Discussion Club that the “final successful test” of the nuclear-powered Burevestnik intercontinental cruise missile had been conducted. The Kremlin had not announced a date for the successful test of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile. “No, in this case I cannot provide any information on this topic,” Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked when these tests took place.