On November 21, 2024, Russia launched a new and powerful missile at a Ukrainian missile factory in the city of Dnipro. The next day, Russian President Putin declared that the new missile, called the Oreshnik, has “quasi-nuclear” capabilities and that it cannot be intercepted. This launch caused a stir in the West, where the Oreshnik was perceived as a version of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Putin’s statements about the Oreshnik suggest that it may use hypersonic kinetic munitions, an innovative concept that has already been muted in the West but has not been implemented there. Putin seems to expect that the Oreshnik will provide Russia with a “quasi -nuclear” deterrent that will give it superiority over the West, at least when it comes to Europe . Upon examination, it seems that his statements about the immunity of the new missile from interception are unfounded, and that the concept of “quasi -nuclear deterrence” is by itself not necessarily realistic.
In the early morning hours of November 21, 2024, the 1,002nd day of the Ukraine war, a barrage of 36 ballistic warheads hit the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro, targeting a missile factory in the south of the city. Security camera footage showed warheads striking in six “bundles,” each containing six warheads for a total of 36 impacts. The glowing heat of the warheads indicated that they had been travelling at high supersonic speeds. However, the footage also showed that the impacts of these warheads were not accompanied by significant explosions, and they may have been inert (i.e., inactive) and not armed with explosives.
This kind of weapon has not been used before in Russia’s bloody war against Ukraine, and its appearance caused a storm of anxiety in the West: Russia, so it seemed, had made the first operational use of an intercontinental ballistic missile. In a televised statement the next day, Russian President Vladimir Putin defined the event as an “operational test” of a new ballistic missile called Oreshnik. According to the Russian President, the target was the Ukrainian Yuzhmash missile design bureau and production complex. Yuzhmash was established during the Soviet era as one of the Soviet Union’s most important ballistic missiles and space launch industrial enterprises. Today it is owned and operated by the Ukrainian government and known to Ukrainians as Pivdenmash. Putin claimed the Oreshnik missile “destroyed” the industrial complex.
He defined the Oreshnik as an “intermediate-range missile” (IRBM). This class of weapons was banned from development and deployment by the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) concluded between the U.S. and the USSR in 1987. This treaty was unilaterally terminated by President Donald Trump in 2018. Putin commented sarcastically that “whoever terminated the agreement must regret it by now.” He denied that the Oreshnik had an intercontinental range and emphasized that it was not a “strategic (i.e. nuclear) missile” but that its destructiveness was equivalent to a strategic weapon (i.e., a nuclear weapon). Putin stated that this missile could not be intercepted because it “attacks at a speed of Mach 10, that is, between 2.5 and 3 kilometers per second,” and therefore “modern defense systems developed in America and Europe are not capable of intercepting such missiles.”
Putin added that Russia already has a stockpile of such missiles and clarified that the specific missile fired at the Yuzhmash complex was “in a non-nuclear hypersonic configuration” – perhaps a hint that a nuclear version of this missile also exists. Russia intends to continue “testing” this missile, Putin added, stating that this may also occur “in operational situations.” The Russian president acknowledged that the use of such a powerful missile constituted an escalation of the war but blamed the U.S. and Britain for instigating it by allowing Ukraine to use missiles they supplied to attack targets within Russian territory. He threatened that Russia might use Oreshnik missiles against countries supporting Ukraine.[1] Furthermore, he stated that the use of a large number of Oreshnik missiles has an effect equivalent to nuclear weapons.[2]
According to one media source, the Oreshnik was launched from the Russian Kapustin Yar test range, located north of the Caspian Sea, some 780 kilometers from its target in the city of Dnipro, Ukraine.[3] Other sources claimed that the missile was fired from a distance of 1,000 kilometers.[4] A ballistic missile fired at such a range reenters the atmosphere at a speed of about 3 kilometers per second – close to the figure cited by President Putin. As mentioned, a video clip from a security camera in the city of Dnipro clearly shows 36 glowing warheads impacting within a built-up area in the city, arriving in six distinct “bundles.” Curiously, there seemed to be no explosions associated with those impacts.[5] Residents of the city told media that “there were no explosions in the conventional sense.”[6] According to one media source, the warheads that hit the city of Dnipro did not contain explosives but “metal ingots.” Satellite images of the Yuzhmash plant before and after the attack show that the damage was minor and that the plant was not “destroyed” as Putin claimed — a fact that angered a number of commentators in Russia itself.[7]
From the information above, three questions arise: What is the Oreshnik missile? What exactly happened in the attack on the city of Dnipro on November 21? What are the consequences and the significance of its operational use in the Ukrainian war?
To address the first question, we need to go back in time to the INF Treaty. During the 1970s, the Soviet Union deployed a new and powerful nuclear ballistic missile with an intermediate range of approximately 5,500 km. The relatively short range of the new missile (dubbed Pioneer by Russia, NATO designation SS 20) did not threaten the United States, but was clearly intended to threaten Western Europe. In response, NATO deployed on European soil two powerful nuclear missiles developed by the United States: the Pershing II ballistic missile and a ground-based version of the Tomahawk cruise missile. The ranges of these missiles were sufficient to cover the western USSR. The deployment of these powerful missiles raised tensions between the two superpowers and increased the risk of unintended nuclear escalation.
Once Mikhail Gorbachev embarked on his reform campaign in the USSR, tensions between the superpowers gradually waned. Following the summit between Gorbachev and President Reagan in 1986, the two superpowers agreed to dismantle all their ground based intermediate-range nuclear missiles, thereby significantly reducing the threat to Europe and the western USSR. In 1988, Russia and the U.S. concluded the INF Treaty banning the development, production and deployment of ground-launched nuclear missiles (both ballistic and cruise) with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km. Accordingly, the Soviets decommissioned and destroyed a series of ballistic missiles, including all of their Pioneer missiles, and the Americans, for their part, disabled and destroyed their Pershing II and ground-based Tomahawk missiles.[8]
The Soviet military viewed the INF Treaty with skepticism. Even before the fall of the USSR, they initiated several efforts to develop replacement missiles that would restore the capabilities they had lost in complying with the INF Treaty. Their successors in the Russian high command continued and expanded those efforts. Among the Soviet missiles eliminated under the treaty was the SS23 OKA – a tactical nuclear missile with a 500 km range. The Soviet high command refused to accept the loss of this tactical nuclear capability, and as early as 1988 – simultaneously with the signing of the INF Treaty – it initiated an alternative project called Iskander (NATO designation SS26). After the fall of the USSR, development of this missile continued openly under the claim that its range remained below 500 km. Today, the Iskander missile system is in operational service in Russia, and hundreds of these missiles armed with conventional warheads have been fired during the Ukraine war.
To replace the Pioneer, in 2008, Russia commenced development of the RS26 Rubezh (NATO designation SS31). Initially, the Rubezh was presented as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a range of 5,800 km, placing it beyond the range of INF Treaty restrictions . However, Western intelligence later revealed that it was actually an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) designed to succeed the Pioneer in projecting Russian nuclear power over Europe. The new missile violated the still valid INF Treaty, which explains why President Putin’s administration maintains ambiguity about its very existence. Following the Treaty’s abrogation in 2018, the Russian government conceded the existence of the Rubezh but announced a freeze on its development until 2027, presumably to free up budgets for the development of the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV).[9] Perhaps to further obfuscate the issue, President Putin later announced that the Rubezh would be the primary mobile missile to carry the Avangard HGV, implying that the Rubezh had been an ICBM from the start, and thus Russia never violated the INF Treaty. [10]
Due to the ambiguity that still surrounds the development of the Rubezh, there is little open source information regarding its configuration, dimensions or performance. According to one source, the missile’s takeoff weight is 36 tons and it can carry a payload of 800 kg –or 1,200 kg according to another source — to a range of 5,800 km. One source claims that five flight tests of this missile have been conducted, the last four of which were successful. A test in 2012 reportedly reached a range of 5,800 km,[11] while the other successful tests conducted between 2012 and 2015 were limited to 2,000 km. It remains unclear whether the missile carries a single warhead or – like its Pioneer predecessor – a cluster of multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIRVs).[12] The prevailing assessment is that this missile is a short-range version of the RS-24 ICBM known as the Topol. The Topol reportedly carries a cluster of four to six MIRVs, and therefore it is likely that Rubezh has a similar capability.
The connection between the still covert “Rubezh” and the newly unveiled Oreshnik remains unclear, but there are strong indications that they may be closely related. Remarkably, on the eve of the Oreshnik attack, several media outlets in Ukraine reported that Russia was preparing to launch a Rubezh missile from the Kapustin Yar test range toward the capital Kiev. The news (which likely originated from a U.S. intelligence leak) prompted the temporary evacuation of the U.S. and several other Western embassies in the city.[13] Following the attack on Dnipro on November 21, he deputy Pentagon spokesperson stated that the missile involved was an experimental version of the Rubezh IRBM.[14] Most Western analysts agree that this was indeed the Rubezh or a variant of it, rather than a completely new design as claimed by President Putin. A clue supporting this theory this may lie in the names given by the Russians to these missiles: The word Topol in Russian means poplar tree and the word Oreshnik means hazel tree, which according to botanists is smaller than a poplar. This perhaps hints that the Oreshnik, like the mysterious Rubezh, is a smaller version of the Topol. In other words, the Oreshnik and the Rubezh may be largely identical, with the former being perhaps a reduced-range, conventional version of the latter.
As mentioned above, according to sources in Ukraine and Russia, the Oreshnik was launched from the Kapustin Yar test range toward Dnipro, approximately 780 km from the launch site. Putin’s claim that the missile’s velocity was 2.5–3 km per second corresponds to the reentry velocity of a classic ballistic missile of this range. If this was the velocity, this means that the missile did not carry a hypersonic glide vehicle but rather followed a parabolic trajectory like any classic ballistic missile.[15] Technically, Putin was telling the truth when he stated that the Oreshnik was hypersonic: its reentry speed did indeed exceed five times the speed of sound. However, Putin may have misled his audience by labeling the Oreshnik a “hypersonic missile.” This term currently applies only to missiles that maneuver or glide through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, which, as discussed, the Oreshnik apparently did not. It is possible, however, that Putin simply used incorrect terminology, and what he meant was not a “hypersonic missile” but a “hypersonic kinetic weapon,” a fundamentally different concept upon which we will expand later in this paper.
From the characteristics of the attack on Dnipro it can be deduced that the Oreshnik payload consists of six non-nuclear MIRVs, each carrying a cluster of six submunitions. Assuming that the total payload weight of the Oreshnik is the same as that of the Rubezh –1,200 Kgs – it follows that each submunition weighs a little over 33 kg. This is a modest-sized warhead, roughly equivalent to that a medium artillery rocket. At first glance, it seems that the total firepower of the Oreshnik is not much greater than that of a medium rocket launcher such as the Russian Uragan system, or the American MLRS. Deploying a powerful and costly ballistic missile to achieve the effect of a rocket launcher does not make sense. Nevertheless, and as we shall argue below, in Putin’s eyes the Oreshnik makes a lot of sense.
To elucidate this point, lets go back to one of the main features of the Oreshnik attack on Dnipro: the absence of explosions, and the apparent ineffectiveness of the strike on the Yuzhmash industrial complex. It seems that the submunitions that hit the facility did not contain explosives and were completely inert. What could be the reason for that?
One possible explanation for the absence of explosives in the Oreshnik’s submunitions lies in Putin’s characterization of the attack as an “operational test.” On November 17, 2024 — four days before the Dnipro attack — the Biden administration authorized Ukraine to use its American-supplied short-range ballistic missiles to strike targets within Russian national territory. Previously, American authorization was limited to targets within Russian-occupied zones in Ukraine. Putin reacted angrily and two days later threatened a nuclear escalation.[16] It is possible that this event happened to coincide with the completion of preparation for the first flight test of the Oreshnik at the Kapustin Yar test range. Putin – to display his anger at the American move – may have ordered the test to change azimuth from east to west, thereby transforming the Oreshnik’s first flight from a purely technical “test” to an “operational test.” It may well be that the submunitions used for this flight were intentionally inert because as the first in a planned series of validation tests, the objective was not to prove the missile’s destructiveness, but rather its proper operation and the dispersion mechanisms of the MIRVs and their submunitions. Leaving the submunitions inert without explosives might have eased the safety risks to the test range personnel.[17]
A second possibility was raised by several analysts, including the American scientist Ted Postol, who Israeli readers may be familiar with due to his claim that the Iron Dome is ineffective. Postol offered his own explanation in media interviews: the amount of energy released by the inert submunitions when they hit the ground was equal to the energy of a high explosive (HE) charge 1.6 times heavier than the weight of the inert submunitions themselves. In other words, the impact of the submunitions created a powerful “explosion” eliminating the need for high explosives.[18] According to this explanation, these fast moving but inert submunitions were what is known in professional jargon as “hypersonic kinetic munitions.” The idea behind this weapon is that when a very fast projectile smashes into a target, its kinetic energy is instantly converted into heat, vaporizing the projectile in an instant. This in turn creates an explosion that can be more powerful than an equal weight of high explosives. According to the laws of physics, the power of the explosion will be proportional to the square of the projectile’s speed.
This idea was previously floated in the U.S. in the form of kinetic hypersonic weapons launched from space (Project Thor). The idea was to release tungsten rods from satellites, which would hit the ground at a speed high enough to produce an explosion with the power of a small nuclear warhead.[19] This method would have circumvented the international convention against placing nuclear weapons in space as Tungsten rods, despite their destructive power, would obviously not have been nuclear. The concept was never realized nor tested, primarily due to cost/benefit considerations. It is not impossible that Russian scientists and engineers later adopted the idea and “sold” it to Putin. If this assumption is correct, the Oreshnik is not a “hypersonic missile” in the conventional sense, but it carries a payload of “kinetic hypersonic munitions.” If this is indeed the case, the destructive power of the Oreshnik can be expected to increase as its firing range extends.
As Putin intended, the launch of the Oreshnik caused an uproar in Western media and was described by reporters and commentators as a significant escalation of the war in Ukraine due to Russia’s alleged first use of a nuclear-capable ICBM in the Ukraine conflict. However, it appears that the Russian president was well aware of the risk of nuclear escalation and took several steps to contain and minimize it. Russia alerted the United States of the impending launch about 30 minutes before the “Oreshnik” was fired. As noted previously, the day after the launch, Putin made sure to clarify that the missile was not an ICBM and that it was “non-strategic” (i.e., non-nuclear) – statements clearly intended to mollify the American administration in order to minimize the risk of triggering a nuclear alert.
In a surprising development, just days later Putin used the perceived success of the Oreshnik to de-escalate his nuclear rhetoric. Speaking at a press conference in Moscow on December 10, he declared that “what we need now is not a revised nuclear doctrine, but Oreshnik missiles, because a large number of such modern weapons bring us to the threshold rendering nuclear weapons redundant.”[20] This suggests that Putin is convinced that he now has a new, “game-changing” super-technology that can cause near-nuclear destruction by non-nuclear means – a possible allusion to hypersonic kinetic weapons technology. It can be assumed that in his view, this new Russian technology constitutes a real revolution in the balance of power between Russia and the West. Since the Oreshnik can cause “quasi -nuclear” damage, it could serve as a “quasi -nuclear” deterrent without violating the global taboo on the use of nuclear weapons. If necessary, Russia could deploy this technology against the West without fear of nuclear retaliation since hypersonic kinetic munitions are not nuclear weapons. At the same time, the West will not be able to respond in kind, since it does not have such technology, and for obvious reasons would be deterred from launching a nuclear response. Thus, it seems plausible that the Oreshnik — rather than the Rubezh — is likely to be the missile that replaces the Pioneer as the primary threat against Western Europe.
Is there any substance to Putin’s new doctrine? This depends on the actual effectiveness of hypersonic kinetic munitions. As far as is known, and based on the photographic evidence from the Oreshnik strike on the Yuzhmash plant, the damage caused by these munitions was very limited. According to Ted Postol’s calculations, each individual munition should have produced an explosion equivalent to 1.6 times the inert weight of the munition itself – that is, an explosion equivalent to 53 kg of high explosives. A blast of that size should have been recorded by the video cameras that captured the event and perceived by the local residents as a significant explosion. However, no such explosion was observed. If we underestimated the total payload of the Oreshink and it was actually greater than 1,200 kg, the discrepancy between the expected effects and observed effects would have been even larger.
Moreover: even if hypersonic kinetic munitions prove as effective in practice as in theory, it is doubtful that they will achieve a “quasi -nuclear” effect. Even if the Oreshnik had a range of 5,000 km (and as we will see below, the real range is probably much shorter), the explosive effect of its munitions would be four times greater than at Dnipro, or 6.4 times the payload weight of the Oreshnik. Assuming that this weight is 1,200 kg, the expected effect would be equivalent to the explosion of a 7.7-ton, high explosive warhead. While a powerful explosion capable of causing mass casualties and extensive damage to critical infrastructure, this would still be a far cry from even a small nuclear bomb with a yield of just one kiloton (equivalent to 1,000 tons of explosives). It is difficult to see how a threat of one conventional 7.7-ton warhead – or even a dozen such warheads – could be perceived as a “quasi -nuclear” deterrent.
Finally – and perhaps most importantly – the weak point of the “quasi-nuclear” deterrence concept is its fragility. As noted above, Putin defined the missile fired at Dnipro as a “non-nuclear hypersonic configuration” of the Oreshnik. It can be inferred from this definition that there is also a “nuclear hypersonic configuration” of this missile. If Oreshnik missiles were to be fired at Europe, as Putin has threatened, the West would not be able to know in real time whether the missiles taking off from Russian soil are in a “non-nuclear” or “nuclear” configuration. This uncertainty could cause the West to respond with nuclear weapons. The only way to prevent an ambiguity that could escalate into a global catastrophe is an arms control treaty between Russia and the West, in which the former would undertake that the Oreshnik will never be nuclear and submit to verification inspections by the latter. The prospects of Russia undertaking such commitments are extremely low, to put it mildly.
In Putin’s television broadcast the day after the Dnipro attack, he boasted that even “modern defense systems developed in America and Europe are not capable of intercepting such a missile.”[21] He attributed this to what he said was its high speed of “2.5 to 3 kilometers per second.,” This statement was rather puzzling, since both the United States and Israel have systems that can intercept even faster ballistic missiles. Perhaps to correct this mistake, Putin later offered a different explanation.
At a press conference on December 19, 2024, Putin mentioned the doubts voiced in the West about the Oreshnik’s capabilities and proposed a duel between it and Western defense systems. According to his proposal — the seriousness of which is questionable– Russia would launch an Oreshnik missile at Kiev, the West would be invited to deploy its best defense systems around the city “and we’ll see what happens.” However, instead of again citing the Oreshnik’s “hypersonic velocity” as the reason for the missile’s supposed invulnerability, this time he stated that it is immune to interception thanks to the release of its MIRVs shortly after takeoff, well beyond the effective range of Western defense systems. In other words, the claim is that the Oreshnik cannot be intercepted before it releases its payload package.
“Let’s assume that our Oreshnik is stationed 2,000 km away. Even defense systems deployed in Poland cannot hit it. Within a few seconds we begin to disperse the warheads and that’s it – the train has left the station so there is no chance of intercepting this missile,”[22]– Putin said.
His explanation sheds light on two important points: first, his statement suggests that the range of the “Oreshnik” is probably no more than 2,000 km; second, Putin does not attribute the missile’s immunity to any hypersonic maneuver but to the early dispersion of its warheads. From this it can be inferred that the warheads’ trajectories are typical of ballistic missiles that do not maneuver hypersonically.
Western defense systems, including the Israeli Arrow 3, the U.S. Army THAAD and the U.S. Navy Standard Missile 3, are built to deal with such threats, and have already proven their ability in wars in the Middle East. Any challenges in intercepting the Oreshnik will be due to the need to intercept each of its six warheads before they have time to release their submunitions. This would be expensive but not impossible, and in any case, intercepting even some of the warheads would also reduce the total damage. If and when the Oreshnik is deployed to threaten Europe, NATO countries will likely have at least three defensive options: U.S. Navy defense systems (the AEGIS ashore, which is already deployed in Poland and Romania); the U..S Army’s mobile defense systems, which can be rapidly deployed to Europe; and the Israeli Arrow 3 system purchased by Germany. [23]
From Putin’s statements on December 10 and 19, it appears that he views the Oreshnik as a revolutionary development in military affairs that will tip the balance of power in Russia’s favor. At the same time, the Oreshnik may just be the latest in a series of grandiose and “one-of-a-kind” Russian weapons systems that Putin has flaunted in recent years to intimidate the West — and no less so to boost his image in the eyes of the Russian public. In May 2018, Putin unveiled a series of “one-of-a-kind” weapons systems, including the Kinzhal – an air launched hypersonic ballistic missile that he claimed “cannot be intercepted” – and the Burevestnik – a nuclear-powered cruise missile with an unlimited range. However, Kinzhal missiles are now routinely intercepted by advanced Patriot systems, and Burevestnik tests apparently hit a roadblock after a malfunction in the summer of 2019 that killed five nuclear engineers and leaked nuclear radiation. Time will tell whether the Oreshnik will live up to Putin’s expectations, or whether it will go down as another of his prestigious, but ultimately futile projects.
Regardless, the Oreshnik strike on Dnipro was a significant event both in the Ukrainian war and in the new Cold War currently underway between Russia and the West. The strike demonstrated Putin’s determination to win the battle for Ukraine, perhaps at any cost. At the same time, it allowed Putin to de-escalate his nuclear threats without losing face.
From a global perspective, the launch of the Oreshnik may have heralded the emergence of a new type of weapon with potentially game-changing implications – just as hypersonic missiles, also first unveiled by Putin, constituted a real revolution in military affairs and instigated a new arms race. Another possible outcome of the appearance of the Oreshnik – assuming that it works as advertised – will be the need to deal with the concept of a “quasi -nuclear threat” in the theory and practice of strategic deterrence and arms control. This may well be a subject of analysis and discourse in the future, behind closed doors in military circles and openly in the halls of academia.
[1] For a video of Putin’s above statements, see Putin Unveils Biggest War Weapon, Hindustan Times, Novermber 27 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsm9j5-ROxc&t=56s
[2]Teslova, A., Putin Claims Oreshnik Missile Mass Use As Devastating As Nuclear Weapon, Anadolu Ajansi, Novermber 23 2024 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/russia-ukraine-war/putin-claims-oreshnik-missiles-mass-use-as-devastating-as-nuclear-weapons/3402034
[3]Video report in the pro Russian internet news site Southfront, Novermber 21 2024, https://s5.cdnstatic.space/wp-content/uploads/video/22.11.2024_IMR_Ukraine.mp4
[4]Grinall, R., Partidge C., What we know about Russia’s Oreshnik Missile, BBC, 22.11.2024
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg07zw9vj1o
[5] ICBM attack video, 22.11.2024 NDTV
[6] Bryen, S., Implications of the Oreshnik strike, Weapons and Strategy, 25.11.2024
https://weapons.substack.com/p/implications-of-the-oreshnik-strike
[7] Malyasov, D., Russain propagandists criticize Putin’s “Super Missile”, Defense Blog, 25.11.2024
https://defence-blog.com/russian-propagandists-criticize-putins-super-missile
[8]The agreement also applied to Soviet intermediate-range missiles that preceded the Pioneer and were still in use. A total of 2,692 missiles of all types were destroyed. The agreement also applied to the launchers of these missiles, but it became clear over time that the Soviets had not destroyed all the Pioneer launchers, and several of them were later seen in parades in North Korea. It was agreed between the parties to preserve two missiles of each type for historical purposes and for museum display. The Pershing II missile was displayed alongside the Pioneer missile in the foyer of the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C
.
[9] Trevitchick, J., Russia Halts Years of Work on Ballistic Missile to Pay for Hypersonic Weapons, The Warzone, March 24 2018
[10] Newdick, T., The Story of Russia’s Secretive RS -26 Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile, Yahoo News, November 22 2024
[11]The payload weight of the Pioneer, the predecessor of the Rubezh was 1,600 kg, so it is more reasonable to assume that the payload weight of the Rubezh is the higher estimate, that is 1,200 kg, This estimate will be used as the reference weight in the present analysis.
[12] RS 26 Rubezh, Missile Threat, CNSS Missile defense Project, updated April 23 2024,
https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/ss-x-31-rs-26-rubezh/
[13] Kramarenko, D. et al, RS-26 Rubezh: What Russia’s New Missile Signals About Its Military Strategy, BBC – Ukraine, November 20 2024
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/analytics/new-ballistic-missile-what-we-know-about-1732108996.html
[14] Shalvey, K. et al., Russia Launches New IRBM at Ukraine”, ABC News, November 21 2024,
[15] According to some reports, the missile’s flight lasted 15 minutes, compared to about eight minutes on an optimal trajectory. This suggests that it was fired on a lofted trajectory, which is not optimal, but is intended to increase the speed of impact with the ground. It also indicates that the missile’s range potential is much more than 780 km.
[16] Chernova, A. et al., Putin Fine Tunes Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine After Byden’s Arms Decision On Ukraine, In Clear Signal to the West, CNN, November 19 2024
[17] Ukrainian media sources claims that the Oreshnik test was scheduled way before the American permit was given to fire missiles into Russian territory. This does not necessarily contradict the hypothesis offered here. It is clear that preparations for the first test launch of a new missile lasted weeks and months, and it is therefore likely that the missile launch was planned long before the American permit – but not necessarily in the direction of the Dnieper. See: Zadororozhny, K., Oreshnik Stirk Planned Before Long Range Strikes Permission, The Kyiv Independaent, December 6 22024
https://kyivindependent.com/gerasimov-brown-oreshnik
[18] Russian Oreshnik Missile: The Power, Speed and Payloads w/MIT Professor Ted Postol, YouTube (30’49”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKS7OYZoVdE
[19] US Project Thor Would Fire Tungsten Poles At Targets From Outer Space, Space Daily, November 2018 https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/US_Project_Thor_would_fire_tungsten_poles_at_targets_from_outer_space_999.html
[20]Brenden, C., Russia’s Deadly New Missile Makes Nucler Weapons Redundant, Putin Says. Newsweek, December 11 2024
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-putin-nuclear-oreshnik-1998950
[21]Putin omitted Israel’s name from the countries that developed modern defense systems – perhaps intentionally
[22] Dangwall, A., Even THAAD Will Fail! Putin Challenges US for “High Tech Duel”, The Euroasian, December 20 2024
https://www.eurasiantimes.com/even-thaad-will-fail-putin-challenges-u-s
[23] See Rubin, U. Arrow 3, Germany and the Missile Shield Over Europe, Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security September 14th, 2023
https://jiss.org.il/en/rubin-arrow-3-germany-and-the-missile-shield-over-europe/
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