Putin Provides New Details on World’s First Nuclear Powered Missile: Designed For High Yield Decapitation Strikes

The Russian 9M730 Burevestnik intercontinental range cruise missile has reportedly completed a development milestone, and is scheduled to be brought into service in the near future, with new details emerging regarding its capabilities. The Burevestnik was designed to be deployable from surface ships and mobile ground-based launchers, including launch vehicles from the Iskander-M and Bastion mobile tactical missile systems. According to Russian government sources, the missile was designed to be able to strike underground command posts and strategic military command and control centres with a warhead yield approximately one megaton - nearly fifty times the explosive force of the American nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The missile makes use of advanced stealth features and can follow complex trajectories at altitudes as low as 50 metres, which make it particularly challenging to intercept. 

Elaborating on the new weapon after a major test launch on October 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted that the program has achieved major breakthroughs in nuclear propulsion technologies to integrate a miniaturised reactor onto a missile. The reactor, he stated: “is comparable in its output with a reactor of a nuclear-propelled submarine, but it’s 1,000 times smaller… But the key thing is that where a regular reactor needs hours, days or weeks to go online, this one launches in minutes or seconds.” With an ability to remain airborne for years at a time, missile’s effectively unlimited range further complicates possible efforts to intercept it, and allows it to approach targets from unpredictable trajectories. The United States, for example, has concentrated air defences alongside in its northern and northeastern regions, while the Burevestnik could realistically cross into the country from across the Mexican border.