Putin Uses Old Missile Technology to Send a New Message to the West
Russian President Vladimir Putin has hailed the first long-distance test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile that the Kremlin leader said has no equal in the West.
The claim sent a warning to the West about risks of escalation in Ukraine and could yield a bargaining chip in potential arms negotiations with Washington. While Western diplomats said the test represents a dangerous new capability for Russia, the announcement sparked more head scratching than fear for some missile-technology and nuclear-proliferation experts.
Putin, wearing a camouflage military uniform, met with Russia’s chief of the general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, according to a video released by the Kremlin on Sunday. Gerasimov told him [Putin] the missile, called the Burevestnik, flew 8,700 miles over 15 hours.
If the Burevestnik performs as Putin and his top general boasted, it could deliver a nuclear warhead to the far side of the planet using a unique propulsion system. It could stay aloft almost indefinitely, hugging the ground or sea and swerving to evade missile-defense systems.
But the weapon would be anachronistic in many ways, experts say. The Burevestnik, which flew at well below the speed of sound, made its debut just as subsonic missiles are increasingly being shot down in Ukraine because modern defensive systems can lock onto them. Strategists are instead focusing on using faster hypersonic projectiles, now in development.
The Burevestnik’s radioactivity could make it easy to detect. Its apparent complexity—including multiple propulsion systems that must be perfectly timed for success—increases its risk of failure.
“Technically it’s feasible,” said William Alberque, a former arms-control official at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “But now speed and maneuverability are the sine qua non.”
The missile test comes amid growing tension between Russia and the Trump administration. President Trump has expressed frustration with Putin in recent weeks over his slow-walking of the Ukraine peace process. A proposed summit between the leaders is on hold, and the administration lifted restrictions on Ukraine’s use of some long-range missiles to target Russia.
The new missile could also pose a potential threat to Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile-defense system, which is designed to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles that have a much higher trajectory than the low-flying Burevestnik. As such, it could give Moscow potential leverage in arms-control talks, should they ever resume.
“The Burevestnik really is a political weapon,” said Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations’ Institute for Disarmament Research.
Nuclear-powered cruise missiles aren’t a new idea. The U.S. had an extensive program on them in the 1950s but abandoned the concept as scientists perfected intercontinental ballistic missiles, which fly far faster and higher. Russian research papers on the topic also date to the 1950s, said Douglas Barrie, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank in London.
“It was always a kind of science-lab project,” said Barrie. “There’s a lack of practicality and a vulnerability about it.”
Guidance System
Exhaust
Engine: Nuclear turbojet
Range: Nearly unlimited
Speed: about 500-800 mph
Flight altitude: about 75-325 ft
Booster rocket
Warhead
Wings
Nuclear reactor
Warhead
Exhaust
Air inlet
Turbine
Compressor
Russia began looking into nuclear-powered missiles and other potentially game-changing technologies after the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. Then-President George W. Bush said quitting the 1972 agreement was necessary so the U.S. could develop defenses against rogue states, following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Russian officials worried that U.S. missile defenses made a pre-emptive strike on Russia more conceivable for Washington, as they would allow it to parry any retaliatory strike. Similar concerns had dogged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, when then-President Ronald Reagan pursued his Strategic Defense Initiative, widely known as Star Wars.
Putin first unveiled the Burevestnik in 2018, during Trump’s first term, showing a computer animated video depicting the missile approaching America from the South Pole—a nod to the missile’s near-limitless nuclear propulsion. The slick graphics showed the missile dodging air-defense systems as it traversed the globe.
The reality, however, soon proved far more complicated. Within months of the unveiling, tests showed the missile could fly for little more than minutes at a time. Several failed tests forced the military to retrieve one missile from Russia’s Arctic waters, a person briefed on the tests said at the time.
The next year, five nuclear scientists died in mysterious circumstances when an explosion ripped through a Russian testing site in the White Sea. Nuclear arms experts attributed the accident to development of the Burevestnik.
“This missile has cost Russia so much” in money and lives, said Alberque.
Nuclear arms experts noticed activity earlier this year near an Arctic launching site used in previous Burevestnik launches, but it was unclear whether any tests were made at that time.
In Putin’s comments earlier in the week to Gerasimov, the leader acknowledged the technological difficulty of a nuclear-powered missile.
“Even advanced specialists told me that the goal is good and worthy but was impossible to be realized in the near future,” he said. “And now a decisive test has been completed.”
Nuclear experts outside Russia have long believed the Burevestnik’s political importance outstrips its military capabilities. While the ground-launched Burevestnik is conceived as a retaliatory weapon, any initial nuclear strike would likely hit the missile’s launchpads.
“The main purpose of the system is that it allows the Russian president to tell his U.S. counterpart that Moscow can circumvent missile-defense systems,” said Podvig. “But even that might not be true.”
Russia has long sketched out nuclear-war plans that include hitting the U.S. with salvos of subsonic cruise missiles comparable to the U.S. Tomahawk missile. Over recent months, Ukraine has shown that such missiles are relatively easy to shoot down, while much faster projectiles are far harder to stop.
Russia and China have pursued hypersonic missiles—against which the U.S. currently has no defenses. The U.S. and its NATO allies are racing to catch up.
If Russia were to launch a Burevestnik, it could become a target before getting airborne because its nuclear reactor would emit radiation detectable from great distances, including from space.
“As soon as they power on that reactor, we’ll know,” said Alberque, now a senior fellow at the Pacific Forum, a think tank.
A spokeswoman for Norway’s radiation authority said radiation levels had not risen since the test on Oct. 21. Some experts said it may be too soon to draw conclusions.
Launching the missile would also be difficult. A nuclear reactor doesn’t generate enough thrust to hurl a missile skyward, so the Burevestnik shown in footage from the 2018 test appeared to use a more conventional solid-rocket engine to launch and then two additional boosters to gain speed before the reactor takes over, said Barrie.
“It’s not the easiest launch sequence,” said Barrie. Multiple systems add cost and complexity to production, maintenance and operation, he said. “Your scientists may hand-craft one in a lab, but can you put it into production?”
Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com and Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@
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