Yves here. Please note that some of the speculation about the new Russian Oreshnik missile has been cleared up by later news reports and unusually forthcoming commentary by Vladimir Putin.
Western commentators have tried to minimize the potency of the weapon by saying it did not contain explosives, or worse, suggesting it was a dud. This is a serious misreading. Our esteemed commentariat was early to tease out how the Oreshnik works. From comments:
pugilist Military explosives have energy density of about 4-6 MJ per kilogram
At 3000 meters per second, or about Mach 10, *any* object surpasses that. Meaning any hunk of metal will deal more damage slamming into an object than an equivalent explosive payload would do. No need for fuses, explosives, proximity sensors, etc – greatly simplifying the payload design
redleg >Blasting calculations use distance from the charge divided by either the square or cube of the weight of the charge to get a scaled distance.
Damage would be from:
1. Direct impact of projectile
2. Shockwave from projectile impact (and from air pressure 3+ km/s arrival velocity), which propagates through any material not in a vacuum,
3. Vibration from impact.
Multiply by each warhead, and use the scaled distance from each to calculate cumulative effects of shock/vibration damage extending from the impact.No explosive needed. Energy = 0.5* mass*(velocity^2). The damage will be intense and be more like a hammer blow than an explosion.
What I tried to say (in way too much haste) was that if we assume these were purely kinetic warheads – merely blocks of dense material – then they don’t need that much heat shielding as there’s nothing sensitive to protect inside the warhead. No sensors, no control surfaces.
The impact energy of 80 kg of tungsten hitting at mach 10 will be the same regardless of the surface condition or heat of the projectile, as long as most of the mass reaches the target.
Putin stated, as was already widely surmised, that the Oreshnik was “nuclear capable”. However, give the likely givens above, there does not seem to be any reason for it to carry conventional explosives, since the raw kinetic force + additional superheating damage delivers a much bigger punch.
By Rob Urie, author of Zen Economics, artist, and musician who publishes The Journal of Belligerent Pontification on Substack
The Russian response to the US launching ATACMS short range missiles at targets deep inside Russia was to turn a very large Ukrainian munitions factory into fine dust using a new weapon which Russian President Vladimir Putin claims is currently in production.
The Russian weapon is by reports non-nuclear, but hardly conventional. Per Ted Postol, the missiles fired into Ukraine reportedly traveled at speeds up to Mach 10. They appeared to superheat from a long glide at low altitude that occurred after the missiles reentered the atmosphere. And they combined heat with kinetic energy as they hit their target to create nuclear scale destruction without nuclear technology.
Gilbert Doctorow offers that the new Russian weapon is a smaller version of an existing liquid-fuel propelled ICBM that was first revealed by the Russians in 2018. The non-nuclear ICBM can hit any city in the world, travels so fast that it can’t be stopped, and one missile can destroy a land mass the size of Britain.
The version fired into Ukraine has a solid-fuel rocket, making it more stable than the liquid-fuel version, per Doctorow.
As if to demonstrate the intellectual decline of the US, The New York Times reports that the new Russian weapon can be fitted with nuclear warheads. Why this is stupid almost beyond comprehension is that the weapon produces nuclear-scale destruction without being nuclear. Putting nuclear warheads on it would make it a less effective weapon, not more.
Why this confusion is problematic is that the Times is a mouthpiece for the CIA and Pentagon. If these sources really have this little understanding of the Russian weapon, it indicates an incapacity by the US to comprehend what it is that the Russians have created.
Because of the weapon’s hypersonic speed, it is impossible to stop using currently existing technologies. Given this, as well as the weapon’s destructive capacity, the Russians can destroy any city within range of the weapon with no way for the intended target or its allies to stop it once the weapon has been launched.
But as Doctorow has it, the greater threat is the ICBMs (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles). If one of these ICBMs were to hit, say Philadelphia, it would take out New York and Washington as well, the ‘Eastern corridor’ of the US. The US as a nation would cease to exist were this to occur.
Some pundits in Europe appear to be confused as to who it is that is firing the ATACMS missiles into Russia. Several otherwise knowledgeable talking heads have asserted that it is Ukraine that is firing the missiles. This likely came from the Biden administration’s framing that it ‘had given Ukraine permission to fire’ the missiles when, for technical and security reasons, only the Americans can launch them.
The point: the Ukrainians didn’t fire the ATACMS missiles at Russia, the Americans did. By pretending that the decision to fire additional missiles lies with Zelensky and the Ukrainians, the Biden administration wants to control the process without taking responsibility for the consequences.
The Biden administration appears to be assuming that the rest of the world is as gullible and ignorant of basic facts as it is. The Russians know who fired the missiles. At present, to the extent that there is confusion amongst the belligerents, it is on the American and European side.
With apologies for the use of the phrase, the new weapons give Russia ‘escalation dominance,’ meaning that Russia will prevail against foes as the parties escalate due to the lethality and speed of the new weapons.
With its military cupboards bare, the only escalatory response that the US has left is nuclear weapons. Despite claims to the contrary emanating from the Biden White House, the Trump-elect administration, and the American defense establishment, almost any use of nuclear weapons will set in motion a chain of events that will end humanity.
After the new Russian weapon landed in Ukraine, the Biden administration launched a second volley of ATACMS missiles into Russia. This, as members of the US military publicly proposed that the US place nuclear weapons in Ukraine and stated that the US is prepared to prevail in a nuclear war.
The Russians have already stated that Russia will not accept nuclear weapons being placed in Ukraine because of Ukraine’s proximity to Russia. According to retired US Colonel Doug MacGregor, the US does have the nuclear weapons to place in Ukraine. They are about all that the US has left according to MacGregor.
The incoming Trump administration is looking even dumber and more dangerous than Biden & Co., with Trump’s Deputy National Security advisor, Sebastion Gorka, and National Security advisor, Mike Walz, both displaying crude belligerence, near complete ignorance of basic facts, and a certainty that truly, deeply, unworkable ideas will change the course of history. Note: this is a decent description of Biden and his brain trust as well. And they got us to the current mess.
For instance, Gorka is pushing the Trump campaign’s silliness that Trump will threaten to flood Ukraine with weapons until Putin begs for a cease-fire deal. One problem with this idea is that Ukraine is out of armies. Flood away, there is no one left to use the American weapons. Another problem is that, according to the military folk referenced above, the American military’s cupboards are bare, meaning that the weapons needed to flood Ukraine with will need to first be produced.
This makes the Trump plan for Ukraine a three—five-year proposition.
The extra not-well-thought-outedness of the plan is that the whole logic of Biden drawing the Russians into Ukraine was to ‘bleed Russia.’ The idea, as was reported in the US press, was that Russia would waste blood and treasure in Ukraine to the point where the Americans could organize a Color Revolution, remove Mr. Putin, and then loot Russia’s resources. While this makes Biden and his compatriots industrial scale scumbags, it also reveals their profound ignorance of how far both Russia and China have developed since such a move was practicable.
The irony of the Trump plan, if anything this dangerous can be ironic, is that it would ‘bleed’ the US. 1) the US currently lacks the weapons to back-up Trump’s threat. 2) the lead -time and cost to produce the weapons that Trump is threatening to deploy are prohibitive. 3) the ‘plan’ reads like good old-fashioned American bullshit and bluster, because that is what it is.
What is most telling about what the Americans are doing and saying is that they don’t appear to understand the position that they have put the US, and the world, into. If the Americans could either match or stop Russia’s hypersonic weapons, which they can’t, then their threats might seem impolitic, crude, and unnecessarily belligerent, but not totally batshit crazy.
If Trump imagines that the war in Ukraine will be ended with the three Bs, belligerence, bullshit, and bluster, this seems a weak plan. The second-order problem for Trump is that his planned Greater Israel war against the entire Middle East depends on first ending the US war in Ukraine.
While this may read as an opportunity for the US to not recreate Hitler’s march through Europe, only in the Middle East, the more likely result is that getting bogged down in Stalingrad (Ukraine) will be the coup de grace. If the consequences could be confined to the politicians who created this mess, justice might be served. But that isn’t how the West works. They will be in bunkers as the rest of us are sent to the great beyond. Thank you, Joe Biden.
Much of the technical information in this note came from public interviews with Ted Postol, Gilbert Doctorow, Scott Ritter, and Douglas MacGregor.
Severe lack of critical thinking there by Gorka … that was already tried, it was called the Biden strategy. It already failed.
It’s now gotten so bad that the Pentagon has stated they’re out of weapons to send and can’t spend the existing authority that Congress provided.
Gorka’s grandfather came from the Arrow cross movement, father fled the country after the 56 anti soviet uprising to Britain then our Sebastian returned to Hungary in 92 as a self styled expert in terrorism, current affairs,etc,,in other words stirring up Russia hatred and after 9/11 Muslim hatred but seemingly now an admirer of the Jews as well, since they hate Muslims and Russians and the US govt idolises Israel. Which just shows these dangerous lunatics can’t make their minds up, they’ve too much time on there hands so the unreal Washington think tank scene is the perfect environment for them, bad news for everyone else on earth.
Remember that the Hungarian Second Army was one of the Axis units destroyed at Stalingrad, too…
The 3rd Hungarian army was one of the units carrying out the very last German offensive on the Eastern front, in March 1945 (Unternehmen Frühlingserwachen).
While the Fed might be able to print dollars it can’t print weapons or soldiers to utilize them
If the Americans could either match or stop Russia’s hypersonic weapons, which they can’t, then their threats might seem impolitic, crude, and unnecessarily belligerent, but not totally batshit crazy.
Today in AP news: https://apnews.com/article/navy-hypersonic-weapon-zumwalt-china-russia-ec3272a36042796518aec665a4e65df3
‘Stealth destroyer to be home for 1st hypersonic weapon on a US warship’
‘ to be’ is doing a lot of work in that headline, but a non careful read says we have such a weapon. Scary times.
“A U.S. hypersonic weapon was successfully tested”
Well that´s simply 99% not true. If it were we would have gotten WH and Navy and Army stating just that. But none of it. Still AP and friends keep repeating it.
The Warzone:
Hypersonic Weapon Just Tested In Florida, Results Unclear
Vague details about a recently “initiated” test comes after the Army scrubbed three planned hypersonic missile launches last year.
30/7/24
https://www.twz.com/land/hypersonic-weapon-just-tested-in-florida-results-unclear
Jen Judson from defensenews.com:
“not a single official at SMD brought up a late July Florida test. There was obviously a big focus on the Hawaiian test in May… and there’s more testing to come but when I asked I was told no details could be divulged. This has been a pain in the butt to cover and all we can get is cryptic piecemeal.”
9/8/24
https://nitter.poast.org/JenJudson/status/1821880740079906848#m
NATO spokesperson on that area, Kerstin Huber, said, wait another 20 years for it. So does Martyanov.
With the new info out on metals and speed issues and heating of Oreshnik we have a first indicator (of many) why this is not unlikely.
My non careful read says a ship that failed at everything is going to be armed with weapons that do not exist yet. Money well spent.
>”a ship that failed at everything is going to be armed with weapons that do not exist”
🤣
exactly!
p.s. I forgot which US Senator had made that great comment in the 1990s when the B2 was announced for $1billion a piece: If the B2-bomber is invisible why don´t we just claim we build it and in reality we don´t and save billions in taxpayer money.
AG: Perhaps that’s exactly what they did… In any case, it’s certainly a good description of how all the trillions in MIC money, also in NATO, has been spent for the last thirty or so years. Of course, they didn’t save taxpayers any money. They just directed it to their own interests.
>”Perhaps that’s exactly what they did”
I must laugh. Its so true.
Much needed laugh!!
+1
Jacques Baud in his recent interview with Nima compared the Oreshnik strike to US use of nuclear weapons in Japan, putting Russia in same position now as US occupied post WW2.
thanks!
People – did you hear? Baud is in town!
Like in Japan, I hope it only takes two strikes to awaken TPTB to the threat of this weapon. Truman only had two but I suspect that Russia may have more than that.
Can´t find that Baud-Nima piece.
You got a link, may be?
got it
Baud – Nima:
Col. Jacques Baud: Russia’s Hypersonic (Oreshnik) Missile Hits Ukraine – Israel Losing in Lebanon
25/11/24
112 min.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JPb60TTWtU
According to Annie Jacobson, author of ‘Nuclear War,’ as well as Doug MacGregor and Ted Postol, US ICBMs are hypersonic for part of their flight.
MacGregor thinks that this will be the research basis of future US efforts to build hypersonic missiles. But that would be years into the future.
All ICBMs (and space vehicles generally) are, technically speaking, hypersonic at least for some part of their flight, when they leave (or approach the top of) Earth’s atmosphere. When people call a missile hypersonic, they seem to refer to things in addition to their speed (endoatmospheric flight characteristics generally–their conntrollability, durability, etc).
Should we perhaps maybe have invested in better diplomats?
Maynard G. Krebs maybe, George F. Kennan of course (even though he was a biggot).
Hydrogen bomb warheads would make it less effective? I find that hard to believe.
“As if to demonstrate the intellectual decline of the US, The New York Times reports that the new Russian weapon can be fitted with nuclear warheads. Why this is stupid almost beyond comprehension is that the weapon produces nuclear-scale destruction without being nuclear. Putting nuclear warheads on it would make it a less effective weapon, not more.”
This is incorrect
– A 1 kg object at 3000 m/s has a kinetic energy of 4.5MJ
– Suppose the object is made of steel and was heated to 4000 degrees Celsius during the glide, that would add 2MJ, so total energy is 6.5MJ
– TNT is about 4.18MJ /kg. As far as I know, common conventional military bombs use explosives around 6MJ/ kg, so it is in the same ballpark as a pure steel object at mach 10 and superheated to 4000 degrees Celsius
– Nukes are many orders of magnitude more powerful:
1 Mt = 4.18 × 10¹⁵ joules. Weighs about 2000 kg –> 2,090,000 MJ/kg
100 kt = 4.18 × 10¹⁴ joules. Weighs about 500 kg –> 836,000 MJ/kg.
1kt = 4.18 × 10¹² joules. Weighs ~200 kg –> 20,900 MJ/kg
That last one would be a low-yielding tactical nuke.
YuShan you are too generous. This article is beyond ridiculous and so far into the realm of magical thinking that it belongs on Twitter. Back to high school physics for this fellow.
Another way to easily debunk this is that of course the Kinetic energy of the weapon has to be produced by the rocket at launch. So burning of the rocket fuel (=chemical reaction) needs to produce at least as much energy as a nuclear warhead. No way! :)
What about gravity assist on way back in atmosphere? I was under impression that the MIRV had its own propulsion/ guidance as well.
It called potential energy and it’s only a fraction of the kinetic energy the vehicle has. The point here is that the destructive power is not up to nuclear warheads, even if it’s likely to be 3-4 times more than a conventional warhead (per unit of weight).
Mr. Putin himself just stated that several of Oreshniks hitting one target is needed to reach tactical nuke level result. Meaning that should Russia have 8-10 of them (and the scuttlebutt claims 20-30 already in service) they can, if need be, use them for similar effect.
Still won’t make it.
Even the most optimal drop shaped impactor would stall out at a few hundred meters per second.
The impactor needs propulsion to get past that.
Right. I figured the terminal velocity in STP air of 100kg of tungsten with a very aerodynamic shape at about Mach 2. Higher in the atmosphere it can go faster but will slow down as the air density increases close to the ground. So a vehicle doing Mach 10 as it hits has powerful motor. What I know nothing about is how much and what sort of guidance that vehicle requires.
It still needs to convert fuel to kinetic energy, which is eventually used to blow things up. But the energy density of this fuel (chemical energy) is orders of magnitude less than what a nuclear warhead of the same mass produces.
However, I do think it is a very capable weapon. Not because of the amount of energy, but the fact that this energy is all focused on the point of impact. Not dissimilar to armor piercing munitions that also have a limited amount of energy, but this energy is all focused on one spot.
So even if the energy is similar to (for example) just 100kg of conventional explosives, if it is able to penetrate a deep underground bunker that could be devastating. At least that is my thinking (I’m not a weapons expert).
Ah, but the fuel and warhead are not of the same mass. Smallest nuclear warheads are around 50 kg, while the alleged weight of Oreshnik is around 40 tons, of which fuel could be 25 to 30 tons. Thus the fuel would have two orders of magnitude more mass than a tactical nuclear warhead.
Of course it’s impossible to turn all that chemical energy into kinetic energy. The first stage is still capable of lifting itself, the second stage and the payload to a suborbital height while accelerating it to a few kilometers per second velocity. There’s quite a lot of power in that “slow burning” mass.
You are still missing the point. At >Mach 10 at impact, the kinetic energy (destructive force) is markedly greater per pound of warhead than for conventional explosives. That is before getting to the not as well known additional effect of the transmission of the great heat (as in immediate vaporization of stuff close by).
Putin: Russia Has Ten Times More Missiles Than NATO Combined – CTSO Summit 2024 – English Subtitles
It is not my intent to dunk on you by saying, but I think you’ve all missed the point.
From the politician’s mouth, the destructive power of “Putler’s” Oreshniki is comparable in power to that of a nuclear weapon.
The power of a nuclear weapon is more than just its capacity to destroy. Didn’t two deployments end the war in the Pacific? Idk, I’m not a WWII buff.
Didn’t the stockpile of nuclear armaments birth the logic of MAD, which forestalled… well, MAD?
“Putler’s” – lofreakingl howd yall let that one leak thru – Oreshniki are in fact more powerful than nuclear weapons, not by their payload, but by the fact that, in theory, were the nuclear-blast-hardened silo’s to be in their range, his little, hazel, nuts could neatly separate NATO from its deterrent force. In like less than 15 minutes or something.
Mind the catechism, war=politics*othermeans. Putin ain’t a scientist, militarist, or specialist. He a politician, just as capable of exaggeration, obfuscation, and sophistry as any other.
ALL-so, ytf is this all turning on the words of some bloviating internet talking heads? Urie, Postol, Ritter… the other guy people are talking about? Y’alls smart, grab a primary source, think for yourselves.
You are in fact mis-citing Putin. From his speech linked below, emphasis mine:
The headline, which is NOT from the Kremlin site, also mis-attributes Putin. Again emphasis mine:
First, this is “relevant missile systems” and not all missile systems. Putin had just discussed various categories of Western long-range missiles versus their Russian counterparts.
Second, Putin said “production” not stockpiles.
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/75687
As some of the those above who have provided detail about the power of a nuclear explosion, the power of an Oreshnik is similar to what Putin calls a strategic weapon. We still do NOT know what the impact of the Oreshnik was. There are a lot of inferences made but no one I have seen yet has provided data (and Putin most assuredly has not) about the strike weight of the weapon, which would allow for working back to estimating the kinetic energy.
And perhaps readers can fill in the blanks from qualified sources that have done analytical work, but I have yet to see anyone provide estimates of how the heat added to destructive impact of the weapon.
Moreover, what the US calls a tactical nuke, the sort of weapon reckless types think we could launch v. Russia to show them and bizarrely not get a retaliation, can be comparatively small:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/what-are-tactical-nuclear-weapons-and-why-did-russia-announce-it-would-hold-drills
Note this piece is less than ideal. Alexander Mercouris has said Russia does not maintain our “tactical nuclear weapon” classification distinction, and he’s enough of a weapons nerd that he has credibility on this topic. But this does indicate how the US thinks about the issue, and may indicate how small our smallest nuclear weapons might be.
However, the bigger point here is that even though multiple Oreshinks deployed together can have similar destructive capability to a nuclear weapon, that covers a multitude of sins. As readers on this and other posts have pointed out, a single nuclear warhead has more destructive power, pound for pound, than a non-nuclear Oreshnik.
As for whether an Oreshnik can destroy a nuclear bunker, we don’t know that given that there have yet to be good analyses of what exactly happened at impact in its first use. Admittedly, there were rumors re an earlier hypersonic missile attack on a bunker that it has effectively destroyed it, not by damage to the hardened underground chamber, which was believe to be intact, but the ventilation system.
The MoD, with only a very few exceptions, has been accurate in what it has said about the war of Ukraine. It can and does withhold information, but lies of omission are not the same as lies of commission.
Please tell me when Putin has lied. He does not have an incentive to here. Ukraine has full access to the Oreshnik strike site and Western experts can no doubt work out fairly exactly what the strike points were and the weight of each warhead was, as in derive the kinetic forces and how they did damage.
Putin was very precise in what he said, in that the 10:1 advantage he depicts Russia as having in #s of long-range missiles was in production. Yet it appears too many either read him hastily or choose to exaggerate for click-bait purposes.
Even so, Russia has a great advantage in numbers in artillery and one suspects in pretty much all missile categories. And the US no doubt has very very close estimates of Russian weapons stocks, so again…what is Putin’s incentive to lie?
Putin has been fairly explicit about what he considers “tactical” weapons–I think, in the Tucker Carlson interview, he mentioned that weapons with 100+ kiloton yields would be in play if NATO resorts to small nukes, iirc.
I will have to look at what Putin said, but this sounds like a misreading to me.
Putin has made clear that any use of nukes v. Russia would be regarded as an existential threat. It would not elicit a mere “tactical nuke” tit for tat but an overwhelming return strike. He has said things along these lines repeatedly to try to deter the West from thinking it can resort to using tactical nukes w/o unleashing a full on nuclear war.
Thank you for the emboldened reply.
In fairness, Ms. Smith, I have previously shared with you an instance of Mr. Putin telling a fib. We disagreed, and that’s ok. Thanks for keeping me around anyway.
As it pertains to my specific charge above, I don’t believe I was referring to any specific detail Mr. Putin shared as being less than truthful, per se, only that he is a politician, and politicians have their ways, and we little people should remember that. It’s a point I’ve raised in the past. If you keep me around, or if I stick around, I’ll probably have occasion to bring it up in the future, since I don’t see myself catapulting to the apex of humanity any time soon (if I do I’ll only ever tell the truth I promise). Crazier things have happened, and I am just that egotistical, so fingers crossed.
Christmas is right around the corner after all.
It’s entirely possible that His little hazel nuts – or daggers, or zircons, or vanguards – can’t penetrate nuclear-blast-hardened bunkers, I lied, or at least made that shit up. Seems likely but I failed physics so I’m not the guy to ask. If you’re going to make a weapon like this I don’t know why you wouldn’t strive for that capability, unless the materials science just isn’t there.
However, if you prefer to disagree regarding His little hazel nuts – or daggers, or zirkons, or vanguards – being more powerful than a nuclear weapon, by virtue of the fact that He can actually use them to prosecute His spetsoperatsiya (among other things), and the fact that shit gets turnt where/when they are deployed, we can add another mark to the agree to disagree scorecard.
Destructive potential is one thing. Practically speaking, my shitty old Savage .22 rifle is more powerful that any nuclear weapon.
Again, not saying He is lying about anything in particular, but stakes like these, there’s plenty of incentive to lie, exaggerate, obfuscate. I remember when this conflict first started, everyone was all agog at how super good the Russians are at playing maskirovka, idk, whatever.
Anyone else ever read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? I’m tripping out right now with this stuff.
Thanks again! Happy late Thanksgiving. Do they have that in Thailand yet?
P.S. I didn’t misquote Mr. “Putler,” Oreshniki is the plural of Oreshnik, ergo Oreshniki=multiple Oreshniks=comparable in power to nuclear weaponry=yeah so i got a little lazy.
I am not buying your bob and weave, and your sneering is out of line. Putin was specific that the multiple Oreshink would have to be deployed all together to approximate a nuclear strike. Your use of the plural is NOT equivalent to what Putin said.
As for your earlier dispute about Putin’s accuracy, I rebutted that and was not interested in your persistent attempt to litigate the matter further, offline (a violation of our written site Policies) particularly since you were engaging in broken record as opposed to any new substance.
Even worse, here all you have is ad hom. You say Putin is a pol, therefore he lies. You resort to childish name calling and also get stroopy with me (the gratuitous “He’ and “Him:” to insinuate I am worshipful, and “Ms. Smith”) is an effort to use ‘tude to cover for lack of substantiation re inaccuracy. Ad hom is another violation of our site Policies and intellectually debased.
If you looked at Putin’s speech, he was sharing all of those weapons details not for the benefit of the audience, but to try to get through to a foreign audience that Russia has better or at least comparable long-range missiles and is superior in other categories, and he included the claim that Russia knows the location and quantities of key Western weapon systems caches. If you want to convince your opponent on the latter point, you need to be accurate on the one that they can verify. So I do not understand your insistence here.
Similarly, as I pointed out at length, all we have now about the Oreshnik is somewhat informed speculation, based on pretty good estimates of impact speed and the missile count and the increasingly acknowledged (confirmed by independent sources of people like Larry Johnson) of the pulverization of the Yuzhmash site. The Russians and Western experts who have been to the site almost certainly have a better estimate of its destructive capacity than we have from the peanut gallery. You appear to be continuing to argue for the sake of having the last word as opposed to making a valuable contribution to our collective knowledge.
Explosive energy, whether chemical or nuclear, is wasteful. It radiates in all directions. Kinetic energy is efficient- it releases it’s energy onto a POINT (more accurately- a cone, with the apex being the point of impact). Kinetic energy transfer is orders of magnitude more efficient than explosive energy transfer (onto a point target). So when you consider the energy released onto a POINT, kinetic energy release is going to be equal to a FAR LARGER explosive energy release. This is the part people are failing to understand. So as far as that POINT TARGET is concerned, the likely multi-ton force released by a kinetic energy weapon is going to equate to a multi-kiloton explosive energy release.
I am late to the party, but what people seem to be forgetting is that the weapon FOCUSES its energy. The energy does not radiate outward as it would in an explosion. The energy is dissipated in a cone, with the point of impact being the apex of the cone. If the energy is dissipated into an area that is essentially 1 percent of a sphere, say, then this weapon would have the destructive power, WITHIN THAT AREA OF FOCUS, of an amount equal to a conventional explosion/bomb of 100 times the power released by the Oreshnik impact (using numbers that hopefully make this concept easy to understand). This has to be accounted for. The magic of the Oreshnik is in the EFFICIENCY in which it directs it’s released energy onto it’s target. Explosions from bombs that typically release energy in all directions are inefficient weapons against point targets or deeply buried fortifications- as they waste most of the explosive energy by dispersing it in directions that do not directly affect a point target/buried target. This is the primary issue that differentiates Oreshnik.
Thanks for bringing up the importance of the concentrated force in a small area.
The kinetic energy delivered by an Oreshnik missile is estimated to be 2,100 kg TNTe (TNT equivalent). That’s about the same as four FAB500s. The difference is that the energy is released in a very concentrated manner.
The hyperbole in the article is laughable. The guy used Dr. Doctorow as a source, and Dr. Doctorow makes very clear that he is not a technical expert.
The destruction of the factory, as described by witnesses, is considerable, but it is very likely that the Oreshnik projectiles penetrated to the underground chambers where they detonated the missiles and/or propellants stored therein. No, or very little, collateral damage.
Could be assembled in earth orbit to increase mass. Factory vessel could be on the other side of planet at launch. I could be dreaming this…welcome to MAGAtWorld.
Exactly, this article is beyond stupid.
Thought those hyper sonic units used the exterior surface and it’s pressure dynamics to ignite passing air to propel object forward – Forgot what they called it… also thought there were some transonic flight test off California about 2 decades ago. – I must have that covid memory thing
Impacts of meteorites and impacts show results……DARPA has been doing studies of impacts as well, for decades
Scramjets are, I believe, what you are thinking about. They used to talk about them, but I haven’t heard of the US going very far with them, since there was more money to be made in whatever they did pursue.
Economists can’t do high school physics. That’s the whole problem with the economy.
I would say that the problem with Economics is that economists can do nothing but high school physics.
Only a subset. Fluid dynamics.
Please stop that. I nearly lost a keyboard.
I was doing these calculations last week and got the same numbers as you. A mach 10 kinetic weapon is comparable in energy per kilogram to high explosive. A 100 kg mach 10 kinetic weapon is in a 0.1 to 0.2 equivalent ton of TNT (t) range. Modern high explosives are in this range too, being between 1 and 1.6 x as energetic as TNT, as far as I could tell. A ballistic missile carrying 36 of them is in the 1 to 10 t. We measure nuclear weapon yield at the low end starting in kt, which is 1000x larger. So I don’t understand why some (e.g. Wilkerson on Napolitano’s youtube show) describe the Hazelnut Tree as having the destructive power of nukes but without the toxicity, radiation, fallout and winter.
I agree, the destructive power resulting from the kinetic energy of hypersonic missiles has been greatly misunderstood. For example, a 200 kg (inert) tungsten projectile striking its target at 10 times the speed of sound (let’s put that at 340 m/s) has a kinetic energy in the moment of impact of a bit less than 1.2 GJ. That is equivalent to about 275 kg of TNT, or to use a common comparison, 55,000 times less than the explosive power of the nuke dropped on Hiroshima.
Now the penetration/”bunker busting” capabilites would be excellent, thanks to the high speed and possibly the shape of the inert projectile. But the idea that some people have that hypersonic missiles provide similar destructive power to (even small, aka. “tactical”) nukes, by virtue of their kinetic energy alone, is extremely misguided. These are not asteroids hitting the Earth.
The value of hypersonic missiles (as in, missiles capable of maneuvering at hypersonic speeds in the atmosphere) is that they are impossible to shoot down with today’s technology, or with technology on the horizon for that matter. Even lasers won’t do much to a missile that already must withstand massive heat because how fast it is traveling in the atmosphere, and the laser light might even interact in strange ways with the plasma (ionization) cloud generated by these missiles at these speeds inside the atmosphere.
But again, even inert projectiles could be very useful not just against buried targets such as bunkers or nuclear silos (though with those it would be preferable to combine it with a warhead, to actually blow things up once you’ve penetrated the – usually concrete – shielding) but against heavily shielded warships. Imagine for example 50-60 inert tungsten raining down at around Mach 10 on an American aircraft carrier. (Obviously, for such a high-value target, many Oreshkin missiles would be expended.)
These projectiles would very likely penetrate the deck plating of the aircraft carrier (which shouldn’t be underestimated, but is made out of steel and not some alien substance) and then cut through the rest of the ship (hangars, crew quarters etc.) like a knife through butter. A lot of holes would be created in the bottom of the ship and no compartmentalization in the world would be able to prevent the ship from sinking, and very rapidly too, especially given that numerous large holes have been cut through all decks as well. It is not likely that any of the crew would survive.
And if the US and NATO could convince themselves (and others) that they could shoot down previous hypersonic Russian missiles, they will find that more difficult to do with Oreshnik, whether it delivers an inert payload or a warhead of one sort of the other.
They have tried to do this with for example the Zircon missile, claiming that it must slow down around to Mach 3 to acquire target data, because of the ionization it creates around itself at higher speeds, which ironically is also what makes it hard to track by radar. (If this true or not, or possibly fixable by the Russians or not, I don’t know). And they have been made the obligatory dubious claims of successful Ukrainian shootdowns.
I am sorry but you are straw manning the claims made.
It is that the kinetic energy at >Mach 10 at impact exceeds POUND PER POUND of the energy of a conventional (non nuclear) military explosive.
Yes, the energy contained/delivered by a 1 kg “element” traveling at 4,000 m/s equals about 1.9 kg of TNT. The elements in the Oreshnik are estimated to have a mass of 30 kg. Total energy of the missile is about 2,100 kg TNTe. Not very “big.”
The point made by Arkady Bogdanov (above) is that the energy is concentrated, unlike a high explosive charge that expends its energy in all directions (very inefficient).
Following up on the “concentrated force” of a hypersonic projectile, RAND published a graph, which showed a 5x-10x increase in force delivered in front of the “cones” of destruction. (See the link in ISL’s post immediately below). Therefore, the total force of the Oreshnik elements would be between 10-20 thousand kg of TNTe. Still, nowhere near “nuclear.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)
LOL! I’m not talking about museum pieces.
LMFAO! You are talking out your rear end. You did not know about the existence of low-yeald nuclear weapons until now. On the Internetz anyone can be an expert about things they know next-to-nothing about.
Again, LOL!
“…On the Internetz anyone can be an expert about things they know next-to-nothing about…”
That’s exactly what you did to bring up an irrelevant point about a useless weapon designed by people who had very little idea about the danger (radioactive dispersion) of detonating a nuclear device so close to themselves that the “weapon” posed as much of a danger to themselves as to the enemy!
Hahahahaha, good one!
BTW, I knew about “suitcase nukes” many years ago. Similarly, not useful for the conflict under discussion. You cast dispersion out of “your rear end” to use your scurrilous phrase above.
Finally, where did I call names?
For those interested, RAND did a calculation that includes forward projection of the energy.
One can extrapolate Fig 2.3 (RAND did not even envision Mach 9, much less Mach 12), which estimates around 1.5 tons per 100kg projectile. 50 tons for the 36 projectiles. So 20 Hazelnuts is a kiloton.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR2100/RR2137/RAND_RR2137.pdf
My understanding suggests the RAND estimate is a significant underestimate as the RAND calculation neglects the action of shockwaves on subsurface cement-reinforced structures.
To put into perspective, in March 2018 the Khinzal was introduced, reported to go up to Mach 10. Yet in 2017, RAND, which is very much in the know, could not foresee above Mach 8 for hypersonics.
What would make it less effective as a nuclear weapon is the arrival time of each warhead in the sheaf. They are so close together in space and time that the first detonation would impact the other 5 sub-munitions, i.e. the first nuclear detonation will destroy or degrade the other warheads.
Is there reason to think the spread is not an operational parameter?
Definitely possible.
I’ve only seen one “after” image of the factory that was hit, and the most interesting part of the whole attack is the precision. If it was also accurate, it’s peerless. Spread those out over 6 smaller, separate targets and this weapon is truly a game changer.
per Ted Postol with Nima – there is no way the spread could be as narrow unless they were individually maneuvered. So they could also be maneuvered apart, if desired.
Why do you think there would be more than one nuclear warhead on an Oreshnik? I very much doubt it, as it would be unnecessary. Detonation would be aerial, so the utility of the Oreshnik is its survivability against AD.
Multiple smaller warheads cover more area than one big one. The doctrinal transition happened a while ago. Tsar Bomba would not be of much use in a real life scenario, and was dropped for propaganda effect.
To Irrelevant Fact: The Oreshnik is a relatively small intermediate-range weapon. Packing multiple submunitions (nuclear) on the weapon would reduce its performance. MIRVs are effective for ICBMs, which are intended to travel great distances. Under those conditions, directing multiple submunitions to hit different big cities at the target country is logical.
But the goal of delivering multiple nuclear weapons using a single Oreshnik doesn’t make sense: the submunitions would not be able to travel far enough away from each other to all detonate properly. Instead, using multiple Oreshnik missiles would be the most intelligent approach. They could be sequentially fired with a few minutes delay so that the earlier detonations would not impact subsequent detonations. Don’t get so caught up in the irrelevant details that you ignore logic.
Name calling is one ot clearest signs of losing an argument. I recommend moving to X where it still works, to an extent, and people can write whatever.
Then nuclear weapons have been attached to Oreshnik type kinetic weapons already?
My understanding is that while nuclear weapons could be placed on any rockets that can accommodate the payload, how would the nukes be delivered when creating a kinetic blast is the purpose of this type of missile.
In other words, nukes are usually detonated above their targets. But the basic function of the Oreshnik is to crash it into its target.
Your point is that 1 + 2 = 3. That nukes added to the Oreshnik would be a much more powerful weapon.
This certainly must have occurred to the Russians. My bet is that they likely gave the matter a lot of thought. But to the extent of my knowledge, they decided otherwise.
If I recall correctly, I believe that Ted Postol answered back to the question of adding nukes to the Oreshnik: why would anyone want to? The point is that doing so makes sense in theory, not fact.
I don’t think that was YuShan’s point. I think YuShan was saying that the Kinetic Energy weapons that an Oreshnik appears to have delivered on Dnipro by are thousands of times less energetic than even the smallest nukes.
I haven’t heard anyone suggest that that Oreshnik demonstrates the capability to shoot a nuke through buildings or bunkers and detonate it beneath them. That sounds hard to me.
What you write was clear from YuShan’s explanation. There is no perpetual motion machine. If additional destructive force is needed, it must come from somewhere. Nuclear weapons provide a different method of achieving this additional destructive capacity, ergo adding nukes to this type of weapon will increase its destructive capacity. Nuclear weapons are the 2 in 1 + 2 = 3.
And as I believe a comment by Yves below suggests, V. Putin had stated that nukes might be added to the Oreshnik, contradicting what I have written here.
But as I believe YuShan wrote, kinetic energy = energy consumed to project rocket. The math provided begs the question, why not just replace the kinetic effect with nukes? In other words, if kinetic yield = 1 and nuclear yield = 2, why not use nukes alone?
There are political answers to the question– for the Russians to have a conventional weapon with marketing cache.
But Ted Postol, who knows nukes, and Scott Ritter, who is a weapons generalist, both claimed that the Oreshnik is something new. Assurances on paper that it is a conventional weapon by those who didn’t know that it existed until a week ago are likely premature.
You are on the right track. There appears to be some confusion around “kinetic” and “nuclear,” which implies an additive effect. Wrong. There are three variants of the Oreshnik, AFAIK. Kinetic; (conventional) explosive; and Nuclear. The latter two rely on the speed (and trajectory) of the missile to avoid defensive weaponry; the first relies on concentrated kinetic effects to penetrate hardened targets.
Your choice of variant depends upon the target and the desired result. Large-scale destruction would result from aerial detonation of a nuke (and would cause widespread damnation from other countries). Conventional explosive warheads will deliver more localized destructive effects, again relying on missile speed to reduce/eliminate risk of interception. The destructive effects of kinetic warheads will be very localized, and useful for deep penetration of hardened targets.
At Mach 10, I wonder if you could detonate a nuke simply by having the fissile material smashed together on impact – similar to the gun-type nukes. This would be relatively easy to add to a solid slug – just build the slug around longitudinally arranged sub-critical mass chunks of uranium. No fuse needed.
Just a guess, but I suspect “Oreshnik” refers specifially to the Rods from God weapon we saw demonstrated, thanks to the appearance of the reentry when viewed from a comfortable distance.
But if the question is “Could a nuclear counterpart to the system we saw demonstrated be seen as useful?” then I would guess the answer doesn’t depend on kinetic energy calculations so much as the pricetag compared to less exotic systems.
According to the interview of Gilbert Doctorow, the reason to put a nuke on an Oreshkin is because it can be launched from a mobile launcher because it is a solid fuel rocket. The sarmat rocket is liquid fuel so it must be silo launched, and therefore NATO would know where it is and potentially be able to destroy it with a first strike. Not so with a mobile launcher. It adds another layer to the nuclear deterrence.
Both the article and the arithmetic brigade are getting lost in the weeds.
The missile does strategic level damage without triggering a nuclear war. That’s enough to redraw the lines of influence on the strategic board.
Think I messed up my first attempt so here’s the Doctorow discussion of the new weapon as he has learned from his Russia watching.
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/11/27/transcript-of-judging-freedom-edition-of-27-november-2024/
This is just my humble opinion but Gilbert Doctorow is a businessman turned self-styled political analyst. He doesn’t have any experience in the field nor does he have a scientific training or background. I can hardly put his opinion in the same category as Ted Postal, Scott Ritter or the Colonels Wilkerson (who is sharp as a tack and has all kinds of contacts all over the world) and MacGregor.
To your point, there was a period when Judge Napolitano had Doctorow on his show weekly. Napolitano has either dropped him entirely or cut back on him. This occurred after Doctorow made some statements about the Ukraine conflict (I can’t recall precisely what) that Napolitano cross checked with his other Russia commentators and they all rejected them.
True. Even people with serious background err, because that’s what humans do. Taking words of some random blogger as gospel is just silly.
I have to admit that that Russian technology is a genius idea. American intelligence assessed that there was no chance that the Russians would use nukes in the Ukraine and that is what they must have told the White House. Of course Team Biden’s take on that was that they push Russia as hard as they could as wanted and that they would just have to sit there and take it as they would not resort to nukes. But with this new missile technology, the Russians now have the option of using a missile that can hit with the destructive power of a small nuke but with no blowback because they aren’t nukes. Russia’s allies would object to the use of a nuke but not these missiles. The Ukrainians may be trying to brazen out and say ‘Tis but a scratch’ but I heard that their entire parliament did a runner when Putin started to talk about hitting decision-making centers.
Can anyone suggest a weapon or a fact on the ground that would cause the US to back down in Ukraine? Is there anything that would create a reality that our intelligence community and military would agree was insurmountable and required capitulation to Putin’s demands?
I can’t imagine something that would create that situation. I think we will fight these Russians until we have nothing to throw at them but rocks and all the blood of Ukraine has been sacrificed.
The most important weapon in our hands is US Dollar – DXY Index at 105. If this index goes down to bellow 70, then our troops will come back home from foreign lands.
Tom K-ski – this hits the nail on the head. The climate pessimism article also posted today makes the same observation: the elites aren’t affected by their decision making. In fact they gain more wealth from short-sighted policies.
I fear we’ll suffer greatly through the imperial decline of the US as the billionaires squeeze out every last dollar from everything. The only hope I have is it will get so bad, and other nations will be doing so much better for their people (China and Russia) that it will be hard to pretend our current polity is the best of all possible worlds.
Accepting that the US has deep-seated, fundamental and widespread problems that will require drastic societal and economic changes to address, is simply too difficult for many USians.
Ultimately I think that will be the greatest obstacle to averting US continued decline – too many are in too much denial. Bad things coming down the pipe will just be blamed on Russia, China, Iran, etc
It is not so much about backing down as the US thinking it could push Russia against the wall that is nuclear escalation. Most of Russia’s nuclear posturing is just that posturing, without an adequate cause (launching 60-100 missiles, 50 to 70 ATACMS and 10 to 30 Stormshadows/Scalps, on symbolic targets to generate propaganda headlines isn’t) Russia can’t drop a nuke. Dropping a nuke without that cause will result in 2/3 of the world that is being neutral to move to the US camp and suddenly have 194 countries complying with US demand for sanctions.
By showing this missile that can go after hardened targets Russia put the kibosh on that since they can now pursue targets that would have required nukes. The threat of going after US installations (the (anti-)ballistic missile installation in Poland) should not be completely discounted since it can be done using this missile but again is posturing.
Another miscalculation was that the current US administration believes their own propaganda with regards to Trump and expected Russia to wait 2 months with responding to escalations since they think “why bother making it harder for the Russian asset that will move into the White House at that point”. Which completely ignores the internal situation in Russia thinking that the only thing that matters is the US.
I agree! Russia’s response was a huge differential in target value and weapon soze!
ATACMS is tactical its best use against logistics and unit staging areas near the Line of Contact, and that with cluster munitions which are equal to land mines. Storm shadow same w.o land mining.
Russia responded with a big bang on a significant military target- industrial/weapons support!
I agree nuclear is not an option given US firing symbolic V-1 attacks.
All that so much official blither from US is looking like a psyop with no plan.
That’s a leadership decision. Honest question: Do you or does anyone know of a single person in the US who is in a leadership position who would do this? I sure don’t. People is policy and the people in charge are a bunch of bloodthirsty idiots.
Perhaps Putin could advise the world press that at 3am on a Sunday morning a Russian Oreshnik will strike NATO headquarters in Brussels. This would give ample warning to all to evacuate the area beforehand and the press could have cameras at the ready to record the event. This might serve to focus the minds of the NATO leadership that they should no longer risk war with Russia.
This brings to mind the ‘Yuzhmash’ video. It seems to me that was a pre-planned video location to capture the breadth/ferocity of the strike—set up by the Russians!
Russian ‘assets’ must distributed throughout Ukraine.
Col Baud frequently brings up large number of Ukrainian partisans resisting the Kiev regime throughout the country…
Something that wipes out all three legs of nuclear triad at once without a chance to react. Not possible with current earthly technology.
> But with this new missile technology, the Russians now have the option of using a missile that can hit with the destructive power of a small nuke
I don’t think it is that powerful. (See calculations above.) Mach 10 kinetic weapon is similarly energetic as high explosive of the same mass. So a one 1000 kg mass at Mach 10 is comparable to a 1000 kg bomb, which is the rough scale of big gravity and glide bombs Israel and Russia have been dropping a lot of this year. The smallest nukes are measured in kt, a unit 1000x bigger.
I cited below that Putin has said that several Oreshniks deployed together do equal a nuclear strike. He made it clear this was based on expert assessment:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/75687
So narrowly you are right, but in a broader sense, not necessarily.
As far as kinetic penetrators are concerned, one needs to keep in mind that they are not about the sheer energy, but focusing it in a small area (similar to what lasers are in comparison to other light sources). A big bomb exploding above surface will do lot of damage to surrounding objects, and make a small crater. A kinetic penetrator of similar energy, striking the same place, would leave surrounding objects intact and go deep underground. A bunker buster bomb would stuck itself as deep as it can, and then go boom (but you need a big airplane flying over the target in order to use it).
Yes, it’s absolutely amazing what they have been able to accomplish using ‘microchips scavenged from washing machines.’
Something must have been lost in translation here. The amount of kinetic energy required to destroy a land mass the size of Britain is on the order of the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. For reference, that is estimated to be a 7km wide chunk of rock traveling at 20,000 meters per second.
Right. Per my Doctorow link above he says the point of the weapon is precision rather than area destruction. He says Kiev is a sacred city to the Russians and therefore they are reluctant to level the place but an unstoppable bullet to known regime hideouts makes Kiev targeting a lot more feasible.
And that goes for elsewhere in Europe as well. The lack of radioactive fallout is part of this of course.
>>> The non-nuclear ICBM can hit any city in the world, travels so fast that it can’t be stopped, and one missile can destroy a land mass the size of Britain.
Even if that missile was nuclear armed with 6 to 12 400kt nuclear warheads (typical yield of US Minuteman missiles), a single *nuclear* missile delivered over Britain would inflict serious damage—but not destroy it. MIRV warheads do not possess the level of damage as the insanely large >30 megaton H-bombs that were tested in the 1950’s.
There are multiple websites online where you can overlay on a map the damage of a single A-bomb explosion of various yields. see https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
Agreed. This new Russian weapon system may well have impressive long-range destructive potential especially for deep and hardened targets, but “… and one missile can destroy a land mass the size of Britain…” sorry, that’s just wrong. The Russians are not ignorant peasants but they are not twelve feet tall either.
Here is CNN from 2016 on the Russian claims for the SATAN 2 missile. There were dozens of press reports from this time through recently that have claimed variously that the missiles could destroy the individual land masses of Britain, France, Texas, etc.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/26/europe/russia-nuclear-missile-satan-2/index.html
But just because the Russians say it doesn’t make it true.
In looking for rebuttals, I was able to find but one. It is from Reuters, which if memory serves is CIA from the relationship with Thompson.
https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/russias-satan-2-long-range-missile-has-been-in-development-for-years-idUSL2N2VP1TF/
It claims to be a rebutting hyperbole regarding the destructive force of the SATAN 2 missile, but then references claims about Nuclear Winter.
It does provide links to other sources of rebuttal. See for yourselves how thin these rebuttals are at the link. Read into the Reuters piece when looking for content.
So, I wish that better sources were available. But to suggest that the claim is without foundation, or is nonsensical on its face, wasn’t evident to any of the reporters writing these articles, and wasn’t effectively argued by the only rebuttal that resulted from my internet searches.
I don’t trust anything CNN says about what Russia said and tellingly, there are no links to the TASS or Sputnik pieces. Thus whether the remarks were about one missile or the missile system are in doubt. It seems highly unlikely that it referred to a single strike and depicting it as so looks like an attempt to discredit Russia as selling obvious snake oil
During this war, the misrepresentations about what Putin alone has said are rife. I did quote BBC somewhere on this thread but it seemed to be referencing a particular remark I hope to track down later.
Sarmat is not Orezhnik.
Sarmat, aka Satan 2, is a nuclear ICBM with multiple warheads, that has been claimed able to destroy a landmass the size of Texas.
Orezhnik is the conventional weapon that destroyed the largest soviet missile factory that was still in use by Ukraine.
So you probably meant:
“The nuclear ICBM can hit any city in the world, travels so fast that it can’t be stopped, and one missile can destroy a land mass the size of Britain.”
For what it’s worth Tass says that the Sarmat ICBM (RS-28) can carry 10 tons. The Tsar bomb weighed 24 tons, and did not destroy an area the size of Texas, but an area larger than Paris.
The real point to Sarmat is that it is designed to avoid interception by any missile defense system.
Lots have been lost in translation, and in opinions od various “experts”, hence the warning at the very beginning.
I’m still trying to figure out what Doctotow means by this, as it makes no sense to me.
So far as I can see, it what Urie says Doctotow said. No such nonsense is present in the transcript Carolinian linked to, and I don’t remember reading anything that silly in other posts, but I haven’t read everything…. The most plausible source might be an original claim that a single missile could cover a landmass that size – ie one warhead in London, one in Liverpool, and the other 4 strung along a line inbetween. (well, except in this case the missile would need to be launched from Libya – the targets need to more or less line up with the launch site). Hardly the same as destroying the landmass, but with the level of understanding in the rest of the article, it suggests the problem is in between Urie’s ears and keyboard.
Which one of them is a rocket scientist?
No One: Which one of them is a rocket scientist?
Neither one
Nor is Martyanov.
Of those three, Doctorow is the only one sufficiently intellectually scrupulous to confine himself to the facts as best he can ascertain them and to know his limitations, as far as I’ve observed.
Very valid point!
Link to Doctorow:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozlu7UFtR4o
CNN in 2016 describing SATAN 2 missile:
https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/26/europe/russia-nuclear-missile-satan-2/index.html
@ Rob Urie –
[1] In nuclear terminology, throw-weight is the total weight of a missile’s warheads, as well as any associated equipment required to deliver them to a target, such as reentry vehicles, guidance systems, and penetration aids. It’s a significant measure of a missile’s capability, indicating the maximum payload that can be delivered over a given range.
[2] The RS-28 Sarmat, a.k.a. Satan II, is an ICBM that can carry a payload of up to 10 tons, which may include multiple warheads, countermeasures (chaff, etc.), or hypersonic glide vehicles
https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/rs-28-sarmat/
Note that your CNN article claims the Sarmat’s warhead weight as ten times what it actually is and that Sarmat range is 11,000 kilometers, when it’s actually 18,000 kms (which is more impressive). So right there both those CNN claims are false.
[3] Next thing to bear in mind is the practical maximum yield-to-weight ratio for fusion (thermonuclear) weapons is around six megatons of TNT per tonne of bomb mass. So, for a 10-ton thermonuclear warhead, the maximum yield could theoretically be up to 60 megatons of TNT.
[4] For comparison’s sake, the Tsar Bomba, also known as Big Ivan or RDS-220, was the most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. It weighed 27,000 kg (60,000 lbs) and had an explosive yield of 50 megatons of TNT.
Tsar Bomba created a fireball about 8 kilometers (5 miles) in diameter. Its mushroom cloud reached a height of about 64 kilometers (40 miles) and a width of approximately 95 kilometers (59 miles).
[5] So assuming the Sarmat-28’s thermonuclear device — its warhead — was set for maximum explosive yield it’s theoretically conceivable that it might just deliver a explosion comparable to the Tsar Bomba’s.
Nevertheless, the widest part of the UK is approximately 480 kilometers (about 298 miles). Lengthwise, from the UK’s southernmost point to its northernmost point, around 1,000 kilometers (about 621 miles).
So your claim — and the CNN and Sputnik articles — about the Sarmat-28’s destroying the whole UK land mass is also false. (The fallout would kill a lot of folks, though.)
[6] Then, neither you, nor the CNN and Sputnik articles, take account of the most basic fact about thermonuclear weapons. They’re three-stage devices with an initial fission explosion boosted by second-stage radiation-imploded fusion, producing in the third stage a thermonuclear blast hundreds of times greater than an atomic bomb’s.
That three-stage setup enables immense flexibility in terms of explosive effect and type of radiation release — dial-a-yield, as they call it. So if the Sarmat-28 happens to have a warhead weight of 10 tons, but the technology and design enables the dial-a-yield feature — and it very probably does, because why wouldn’t it when every other modern nuclear weapon does? — then accounts, like yours and CNN’s, which assume the Sarmat-28’s yield is invariably one size fairly clearly don’t know what they’re talking about. Do they?
[7] Finally, thermonuclear ICBMs like the Sarmat-28 aren’t new (though its range is impressive). Why are you even wandering off to discuss it, when what is new is the Oreshnik’s mini-Rods from God kinetic capability, which gives the Russians mini-tactical nuke destruction but with immense targeting specificity, depth penetration, and no fallout.
Hope this helps!
The relationship between the Oreshnik and SATAN 2 was made by Doctorow. His point is that Russia has had ICBMs that use the Oreshnik technology since 2018.
CNN may or may not have their facts right. But I was surprised by how many of these articles have been published since it was written that rely on other explanations of the state of Russian missile technology, but that come to the same conclusion.
This doesn’t make any of them correct. And there may be other interests behind promoting the idea. What I can’t get past is that no one commenting that the news stories are prima facie garbage appears to have known that they existed before Doctorow, via me, put it out there.
This is why I thought Doctorow was value-added. He had heard the arguments and was able to tie them to current events.
You may disagree, but given his thesis, he would disagree with you. This isn’t to take a side here, but there seems to be an excess of confidence based on never having heard the arguments to the contrary.
You may not have been looking in the right places.
I have been following the Russian-sympathetic alternative media since just before the SMO started. Commentators regularly debunk Western claims about Russian weapons.
Given the state of search, it is highly unlikely you could have unearthed articles debunking CNN et al without considerable effort.
In other words, I doubt you have gotten far if anywhere in trying to prove the negative.
I think he means that (almost) all the energy is focused on a small spot–the target–rather than dissipated in a fireball or as radiation. So the effective force applied to the target is multiples (orders of magnitude?) greater than the same amount of energy released in a nuclear explosion, with the result being that the destructive effectiveness of the new weapons in a given (relatively small) target area is comparable to tactical nuclear weapons.
But I’m neither a scientist nor an engineer (though I think this, while simple, is consistent with the much more informed discussions beginning at https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/rob-urie-update-on-us-missiles-ukraine-and-russian-response.html#comment-4139493) ….
That’s my critical observation too, so far.
Very precise delivery, very concentrated damage, from very long range, nearly impervious to countermeasures.
Yes. Both Doctorow and Urie seem to have misinterpreted the available information and the evidence of the first use of Oreshnik. Urie says, ” If one of these ICBMs were to hit, say Philadelphia, it would take out New York and Washington as well, the ‘Eastern corridor’ of the US. The US as a nation would cease to exist were this to occur.”
I don’t think that’s true for the non-nuclear version of Oreshnik, but it might be true for the nuclear version carrying 36 independently targeted warheads.
I have been wondering about the “flat trajectory” information. All videos of the impacts I have seen look like the warheads are on high angle final approach trajectories, which would imply, if the overall trajectory is flat, a large change of direction, 60 degrees or more, in the final approach to target. That would, I think, require a lot of drag and loss of kinetic energy if done through a maneuverable carrier vehicle that relied on aerodynamic effects (“glide vehicle”) for path control.
In a Daniel Davis video with Ted Postol, Postol suggested (@10:00 and following) that the pattern of arrival times was consistent with release of the 6 x 6 payload packages on slightly different ballistic trajectories (that converge to near the same impact site) near the mid-point of the trajectory. If the impactors’ approach was ballistic and steep, I don’t see how the boost trajectory can have been flat.
Perhaps all the videos happen to have been taken from a location along the direction of the missile flight, so that the apparent steep final approach is an illusion due to perspective.
Agreed, everything I have read about hypersonic missiles is that they slow down a lot in the atmosphere, so if the point is to hit at high speed you want a steep trajectory.
And a steep final approach is preferable if the goal is to destroy hardened and deep underground facilities.
The descriptions of hypersonic glide vehicles I have seen describe them as maneuverable, but there is a big difference between path adjustment maneuvers to avoid or spoof defensive measures and a radical change of direction, from nearly flat to nearly vertical trajectory.
Perhaps we will learn more if interpretable fragments of the carrier vehicle(s) can be recovered and the implications are made public.
Postol said something very different. He seemed to think the flat trajectory was brilliant. He said the missiles looked to be traveling at the upper edge of the atmosphere (hence little drag) and were “skipping” on it like a stone. He did not go into technical detail, sadly.
I will be very curious to learn more, if that is ever made public.
My concern relates to “how do you go from ‘near horizontal’ to ‘near vertical’ flight via hypersonic aero-drag?” Back-of-head ‘back-of-envelope’ estimate seems to me to require that all the horizontal deceleration has to take place within a distance to target that is comparable to the elevation of the flat flight path prior to the final descent to target. Assuming a 20km elevation during the flat part of the trajectory, that suggests it has to lose about 3 km/s of horizontal velocity (and convert that to vertical velocity, since by definition a flat flight path has little vertical speed) in something like 10 seconds, which is ~40 gravities acceleration (total delta V is about 4 km/s, to go from 3km/s horizontal to 3 km/s vertical).
To do that via aero-braking at the very end of the flight path and retaining precision control of the impact locations is, it seems to me, an astonishing accomplishment, if that is what they have done.
My impression has been that the way the apparent steep trajectory was acheived was via a lofted trajectory, which I’m guessing would require some serious rocket science, but nothing approaching thermodynamic black magic.
If I’m getting it right then the “MIRV’s” get lofted, probably riding a second stage, are released, probably with individual targeting, and then each of them does the Ted Postol trick with their six projectiles. So in the configuration we saw used, the MIRV’s weren’t exactly reentry vehicles, and the secret sauce is in whatever combination of aerodynamics, thrusters, sensors, and computers gets them onto that high trajectory – something that could still be a big deal even with very different MIRV’s that were fewer in number.
A flat approach with near-to-terminal lofting for near vertical descent would work.
To get a vertical component of velocity ~ 3000 m/s would require fall from a height of h = v^2/(2 g) (g ~ 10 m/s^2) of about 450 km, which might require a significant later stage propulsion unit (or perhaps high angle-of-attack aero-breaking could loft the carrier vehicle while reducing horizontal speed). Perhaps this is how it works.
It will be intriguing to learn more, if we ever do.
This is also consistent with some experts taking issue with the MIRV designation w/o fully unpacking why.
My tldr interpretation of Postol:
The missile launches like normal, rises above the bulk of the atmosphere (altitude ??? I’m artillery, not a rocket scientist) where the trajectory flattens out. The bus then skips across the top of the armosphere like a pebble across a pond, which conserves momentum and increases range. Once near the target it tips over and releases the 6 munitions, which are not MIRVs as these are powered (MIRVs are not). These then accelerate towards the target and release their respective 6 sub-munitions (these are MIRVs except they’ve already R’d) to the target.
So the final separation must be very close to target since they will rapidly decelerate in the wind drag without power. That would limit their spread while the 6 munitions could have much more spread.
If you’re right about the powered munitions and unpowered RVs then that modifies my comment 15 minutes ago just below.
I’ll guarantee that the spread (sheaf) of the sub-munitions is adjustable, as this has been done with artillery systems since WW2 or earlier.
I don’t think the propulsion is part of the MIRV definition. If a single missile carries multiple, independently targeted warheads that enter the atmosphere individually, it’s a MIRV.
Also, atmosphere causes friction, so skipping actually sacrifices some range for more unpredictable path (ballistics are very predictable) and a possibility to use control surfaces for maneuvering to make interception much harder.
Whether traditional ballistic missile, “skip-glider” (obsolete?), or “boost-glider” (Avangard), the terminal dive on the target is generally steep. It clearly was here.
BM warhead trajectories are all very high altitude compared to most cruise missiles.
The trajectory of the rocket and those of the RVs are surely independent. From what I gleaned, the rocket’s trajectory is standard ballistic missile and so flies approx. parabolic without much drag in the upper atmosphere or through space. The calculation of Mach 10 at impact was based on reported cloud height and flight time. That speed is many times faster than terminal velocity under gravity so the RVs need a lot of thrust to make them go that fast against air drag. With that much thrust the RV’s powered final trajectory has little to do with the long distance rocket. To destroy deep bunkers I’d think approx. straight down would be optimal, which is what the videos showed. So I imagine (I really don’t know) a classic rocket flight nearly to space where the RVs separate and blast off almost straight down.
It’s impressive and scary stuff but I’m still not sure what’s technically novel about it compared to, for example, what Iran’s did to Israel.
How does a plasma sheath alter drag?
The plasma is caused by the drag. The faster an object moves in the air, the closer the shock-wave is the object body, and eventually the pressure, speed and heat are so intense air becomes chemically unstable and electrons are knocked off the oxygen and nitrogen atoms. The visible glow comes from these atoms releasing photons when they return to their normal state (deexitation).
In other words, plasma doesn’t alter the drag. The drag alters the plasma.
I imagined the terminal velocity might be increased by the plasma, which I view as slippery, but of course, it may also be reduced by stronger ion-air interactions. For extra credit, consider the molten projectile to be rotating on its axis.
> one missile can destroy a land mass the size of Britain.
I challenge this statement.
Earth Impact Effects Program
Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 100.00 km ( = 62.10 miles )
Projectile diameter: 10.00 meters ( = 32.80 feet )
Projectile Density: 10000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 3.00 km per second ( = 1.86 miles per second )
Impact Angle: 90 degrees
Target Density: 2750 kg/m3
Target Type: Crystalline Rock
The projectile lands intact, with a velocity 2.66 km/s = 1.65 miles/s.
Transient Crater Diameter: 209 meters ( = 687 feet )
Transient Crater Depth: 74 meters ( = 243 feet )
Final Crater Diameter: 262 meters ( = 858 feet )
Final Crater Depth: 55.7 meters ( = 183 feet )
The crater formed is a simple crater
The floor of the crater is underlain by a lens of broken rock debris (breccia) with a maximum thickness of 25.8 meters ( = 84.7 feet ).
At this impact velocity ( < 12 km/s), little shock melting of the target occurs.
The major seismic shaking will arrive approximately 20 seconds after impact.
Richter Scale Magnitude: 3.0
I agree, this is off, and have no idea how Urie came up with this.
I missed it on a fast skim and would have gotten Urie to correct it or issued a big caveat in my intro had I seen it.
I read that, seems strange to me. A flat stone can ‘bounce’ off the water surface if the angle is low enough, but the projectile is fully immersed in a low density fluid (the upper atmosphere); why would it suddenly ‘bounce’ and, if it did, which way would it go?
The whole thing is very impressive. All the energy at impact must be provided by the propellant, plus the energy lost by heating the air it passed thru… I’m a little surprised at low trajectories, I would have thought elevation above nearly all atmosphere would be more efficient… 20 miles? plus, videos showed pretty high angle at target.
The atmosphere is not uniform. The different layers have different densities and the boundaries are rather sharp in geologic scale.
How this relates to rocket science is beyond me, lots of calculations plus they are all x,y,z,t dynamic but I can see that it would work in principle.
Well… the stone experiences a density change of say 1000 over the distance of a less than a cm. Granted I’ve heard the missile is encased in plasma, which I know nothing about, maybe that is very sensitive to density. Otoh, skipping doesn’t seem likely to improve accuracy.
My interpretation of that error is that he is describing (or confusing with) what could happen if an Oreshnik were equipped with 6 x 6 city-buster thermonuclear warheads. The warheads would be unstoppable and, if targeted appropriately, would destroy most of the urban regions of the country. It seems unlikely to me that this many nuclear warheads could be contained in the Oreshnik payload section, but even one would cause an unprecedented, for NATO, catastrophe.
Likewise, the statement
“if one of these ICBMs were to hit, say Philadelphia, it would take out New York and Washington as well, the ‘Eastern corridor’ of the US. The US as a nation would cease to exist were this to occur.”
must be wrong. The largest nuclear warhead ever detonated, the Soviet RDD-220 in 1961, had a yield of 50 megatons, and caused superficial damage up to about one hundred and fifty miles away. Now yes, airburst, groundburst, atmospheric conditions etc, but the idea that a conventional weapon could have effects further away than that seems impossible.
I’m thinking it was a long-covid brain fart, not caught by reporter or AI or spell-check. Berlin?
My first thought after reading the article was, “Oh, great, we are talking life-on-earth ending blasts, like the dinosaur-killing asteroid…”
Augmenting anthropogenic climate disruption with yet another human contrivance. We are some clever monkey!
I got this from an interview that Nima did with Gilbert Doctorow on Dialogue Works. Link is below.
A followup search yielded no relevant information to contradict Doctorow’s assertion.
Of those commenting on the Oreshnik weapon, none covered the territory that Doctorow did. It seems quite relevant. It is a much larger version of the Oreshnik with a liquid fueled rocket.
The ‘destroy a land mass the size of England’ comment by Doctorow was the basis of the Philadelphia / New York / Washington comment.
It’s well and good to state what something isn’t. If the Russian ICBM doesn’t destroy a land mass the size of England, how large is its destructive footprint?
It is consequential, isn’t it?
If the contention is that the details make a material difference, or pose a significant challenge to the thesis regarding the politics, please, make that case.
If that argument is convincingly made, I’m glad to change my mind, and I’m glad to do so in public.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozlu7UFtR4o
The sense I got was that suchna missile can scatter its payload over a wide area so that there would be many areas of devastation over a region, not that the whole region would be devastated all at once.
Plus, yes, that was it reference to the Sarmat.
I think he is conflating this new system with its big sister the ICBM Avangard system carrying Sarmats.
Yes, that was my impression from watching too – it was discussing what the ICBM Avangard was capable of doing. As to the destruction of England, it does NOT mean the physical destruction of the land mass, but the destruction of all that meaningfully makes England a functional country.
Here’s the BBC’s take on what that looks like:
Nuclear Disaster Movie I Threads (1984) I Retrospective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvFu7Z5cc88
Threads (1984 film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(1984_film)
It was films like this, and in America, The Day After, that both informed and shocked Europeans and Americans to the true extent of nuclear war. How much these contributed to the protests against the further deployment of Pershing II missiles in Europe or the follow on peace treaties would be hard to say, but re-broadcasting these so that current generations can understand the consequences of nuclear war should be done (but our current leadership elites would never allow it).
In 1966 the BBC commissioned a film by Peter Watkins, The War Game. The corporation subsequently refused to broadcast it.
It’s a depiction of urban life in Britain during and after a nucleat war. It is very, very good.
https://archive.org/details/TheWarGame_201405
Ok hold on a minute. The facility hit was PA Pivdenmash I believe which can’t have been more than a square mile or two. How did we get from its destruction to saying that one Orenshnik “can destroy a land mass the size of Britain”?
Maybe someone said “the city of London” which is depicted as a square mile?
He has mistaken it for Poseidon. It’s hard to keep up with all these weapons. :-p
Doctorow’s remark was made regarding the ICBMs. They are, according to Doctorow, many multiples of the size of the Oreshnik. They also fly twice as fast, to Mach 20, according to (missile expert) Ted Postol,
If I understand correctly, velocity and mass determine the size of the impact. So, much larger missiles traveling much faster make a much larger explosion.
Also, with the push back that I am getting for citing Doctorow, to my knowledge, no one else has addressed the ICBMs.
When it comes to ‘escalation dominance,’ they certainly seem relevant.
So what’s going to be America’s moonshot? Or is there even going to be one? Perhaps turn Musk’s Starlink satellites into an array of Golden Eye(s)?
Musk is going to send all his cars to Russia, and make them explode at the same time.
Cybertrucks crashing can engulf everything around it in flames.
Load them up on a bomber and drop them?
I am not sure there can be a moonshot. Certainly not a rapid deployment of anything to change the current status in Ukraine.
For a moonshot involving new tech and new manufacturing capabilities and new science backing them up… You’d need a bureaucratic and an academic support system under the Trump administration. You’d need a federal contracting system that was more interested in delivering results than profits. You’d need a manufacturing base to support those systems. You’d need simple people to do the work and keep it secret. All of that assumes you have a plan in place with several potential candidates that you can align those systems and workforce behind.
From the inception of the Manhattan Engineer District to dropping the first bomb on Hiroshima took about 4 years. That was during a much different time and the US had a very different society and industrial base. There’s no evidence to say the US or its allies have started this process. So if we say Oreshnik’s debut is the start of serious planning for NATO then past precedent from this kind of project is we might have something worth deploying in 2028.
I don’t think a moonshot led by the US is a possibility here.
“keep it secret”
LOL…when EVERY little part has to be shipped from overseas.
There are a few people left who could talk about what they did when Oak Ridge was the great Atomic City. But they won’t.
Depending on what we need to accomplish what is decided, it is possible the production could be entirely domestic. I’m still not sure even in those circumstances you’d be able to keep it secret.
Probably working on something like bullets that need software updates. $AA$ weapon$.
This Oreshnik flight was an experimental attempt and the likelihood of the successful delivery of a nuclear weapon is quite low. What are the odds of this system delivering a working thermonuclear device that has been heated to 3,000 C? It is unlikely to happen. I read that Russia is talking about beginning nuclear testing again. This is likely intended to cover the unplanned disintegration of warheads over eastern Russia and the resulting dispersal of plutonium in the atmosphere. Interesting times indeed.
Now you’re really speculating. What I’m reading from MOA, Doctorow and others is that this being a non explosive “kinetic” weapon is the whole point and part of the key to the hypersonic speeds. What they mainly needed were special materials that wouldn’t disintegrate before they hit the ground and some sort of survivable guidance to fine tune the steering of the individual warheads as they are falling. This is considered far in advance of any technology that NATO has. So the main takeaways are 1) unstoppable and highly destructive precision 2) rapid flight time to target and 3) not nuclear and therefore immune to the post WW2 nuclear use taboo.
In other words if you are within range and Russia knows where you are then you are DOA no matter how bunkered.
The Russians are obviously maintaining their lead in this area of material science but your point about survivable guidance is the real question. The warheads do not behave like dumb munitions, so are the Russians communicating with them during the flight for corrections or is it all pre-programmed in before take off ? Can changes in course be made after separation over the target ?
If information can be exchanged with an object inside a plasma shield this raises the feat from advances in material science to scientific breakthrough.
The designer of Oreshnik they are on track to develop even more effective heat shielding, so your underlying premise is off. From Andrei Martyanov:
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-creator-of-oreshnik.html
The bigger issue, as hamstak points out below, is not whether it could become technically feasible to deliver a nuke at this speed, but what it the point? We air burst the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nukes out of the view that that would have maximum effect. Perhaps there might be a special case where you might want a below surface explosion (and could the impact energy be used as the detonator?).
Putin most definitely did say the Oreshnik could (not necessarily right now) deliver nukes, so this is an adaptation Russia is working on. I would be loath to dismiss the idea in light of that. Putin does not bluff.
Everyone is conflating ‘hypersonic’ technology with ICBM stuff. Discussions about ‘technically feasible to deliver a nuke at this speed’ are silly, because obviously they can, since they’ve been delivered faster since the ’60s. (in addition to much more fragile human payloads, also going considerably faster, at least at initial contact with the atmosphere) What makes ‘hypersonic’ so difficult is going at that speed for any length of time in the atmosphere. ICBMs punch through the 80 mi or so of atmosphere in half a minute. ‘Hypersonic’ systems flying through the atmosphere have to survive 10s of minutes.
Discussions about ‘technically feasible to deliver a nuke at this speed’ are silly, because obviously they can, since they’ve been delivered faster since the ’60s.
Thank you.
I realize this totally misses the point, but applying materials that can withstand 3000 degrees would have mind-blowingly amazing applications for astronomy and geology
No, that is a good point, that the materials development for the Oreshnik will have many spillover applications. Perhaps mining too. Miners are always looking for better bit-heads. Perhaps you see that as included in “geology”.
And for the first wall:
Fusion Reactor First Wall Materials
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/materials-science/fusion-reactor-first-wall-materials
My speculation takes very little space. They have a reason to consider resuming testing but I have no idea what it is. The melting point of tungsten metal is 3,422C, but I am sure components inside a device would be heated to a very high point regardless of the shielding. I don’t think entropy has stopped working yet. By the way, I’m not making it up.
Asked in an interview with TASS on Saturday whether Moscow is considering the resumption of nuclear tests as a response to the escalatory actions of the US, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov replied that “the issue is on the agenda.”
“Without getting ahead of myself, I will simply say that the situation is quite complex. It is constantly being considered in all its components and aspects,” he said.
It appears you did not read the post with care. Right at the top, a quote from Polar Socialist:
No.
The precision of the sheaf of warheads delivered by the Oreshnik, with all 36 landing in a tight group even considering the 6 that fell outside a small elipse, exceeds what would be required to effectively deliver a tactical nuclear warhead.
The whole nukes speculation seems like a red herring to me, probably part of the generic ‘tactical nuke’ narrative seeding for a false-flag attack. The point of the Oreshnik, it seems, is that any hardened command bunker in Europe can be annihilated with plenty of warning for ‘civilians’ and no possibility for defense, all without resorting to nuclear escalation. That should help focus some minds.
I don’t think NATO wants to admit their complete vulnerability at this point.
Or, as Millennium 7* states, in 15-20 minutes these missiles can take out all the NATO airfields east of Elbe. Not permanently, of course, but for days. And NATO doctrine is all about Air Force.
Martyanov announced a video for next week where he would debunk “disinfo” also spread by Postol…
we´ll see what he means by that in detail.
Thanks, I’ll keep an eye out for this.
I only saw Postol weigh in once, via Nima at Dialogue Works, and I was not impressed. I have had doubts about the extreme deference shown to him by the likes of Ray McGovern, when Postol has long been retired and it is not clear how good a job he could do on keeping current.
Now admittedly Martyanov is too often cursory so he may not land much of a blow.
I have two views on this. First, as you note, Postol has been out of circulation long enough that his take on particulars of a given technology is likely out of date. BUT he is sufficiently well-versed in basic sciences that I would take the broad contours of what he says to be true. In this context, if he says he’s never seen anything like it, i should mean that this is something new and revolutionary, BUT not sure about the details beyond that.
I don’t trust Martyanov, at least 80% of what he says. He’s both too much of a Russia cheerleader and too eager to reflexively slam anyone whose views he disagrees with that I can’t take him seriously witbout doing a lot of homework on my end, and many things he said turned out to be way off by givong the Russians too much credit. (eg the difficulties faced by Russian Black Sea operations in 2022. The ludicrous Western propaganda makes it hard to see how overoptimistic Martyanov was back then, though). His background does not inspire too much confidence either: though he may have gone to the Soviet General Staff school, he was an officer of the Soviet equivalent of the Coast Guard and not someone involved in “military” matters in his normal job. And it’s not as if being a General Staff school grad is a unique qualification–there are thousands of former Russian and Soviet officers who got general staff training in all sorts of places…
The other thing to note is that Martyanov has been removed from General Staff school even more (I think) than Postol is from actively being involved in technological matters (and he was never involved in the nitty gritty of technological dimension of things anyways.) So Even more of a reason to his trust judgments. His experience with the Soviet collapse and its aftermath makes his insights into what’s going wrong with an organization (e.g. US military, government, and society) valuable (much the way Dmitri Orlov is), but when people like Martyanov and Orlov start talking about what Russia is doing right nowadays, a lot of things they say, quite frankly, tug your skepticism node very hard.
Evidence-finding in this matter is complicated.
I find myself running in circles between Postol, Podvig, Stefanovich, Martyanov (Sleboda and Berletic not included who I hadn´t followed in this very matter so closely) and Bernhard from MoA and commentariat there with people like a Steven Starr et al. (I haven ´t checked in there for some time now.)
One says Sarmat “yes”, two say “no” Sarmat; one says 7 RU satellites, one says 9, one says 0. And so on. Not one clear opinion. It´s driving me nuts.
And above all this the chatter of the rabidly Russophobic US/Western academic “elite” establishment which by design denounces everything that RU does, or says, or chooses not to say or not to do.
Hans Kristensen e.g., who I considered a decent source, who writes articles suggesting weighed opinions on China´s WMD plans yet at the same time buys into the most idiotic anti-Putin PR you can imagine.
And then you have a Martyanov attacking not Kristensen, not Jeffrey Lewis and so on, but of all people Postol who has been ostracized by the same US-establishment that Martyanov hates so much. So they share the same opponent. But what is Martyanov doing? He is attacking Postol who is now in his late 70s and has been among the most outspoken critics of the US MIC – in fact threatend by the FBI.
All the while we are talking about WWIII!
None of this makes sense.
Postol´s paper from 2022:
“A Route to Armageddon: Technical Shortfalls in Russia’s Nuclear Early Warning Systems”
Department of Physics and Astronomy University of New Mexico Friday, October 21, 2022
https://disq.us/url?url=https%3A%2F%2Flasg.org%2Fpresentations%2FRouteToArmageddon-TechnicalShortfallsRussiasEarlyWarningSystem-Postol_21Oct2022.pdf%3AM0X6bVnCASCj7IADZKCPGXnsFaI&cuid=3446943
My view is that no one knows anything close to the answer and offering somewhere between educated and wild guesses (Obviosly, since the evidence available is extremely scanty and often dubious.) FWIW, some people (eg Postol) have been honest about this.
I think there are several hundred people in Russia who know a lot, if not everything. But they have kept silent so far…
Yep. It’s boils down to a pub discussion about whatever, but less fun.
…and there is the huge issue of missile defense.
Martyanov says RU can shoot down everything, US nothing.
Postol says nobody can shoot down anything.
Stefanovich says if conditions are right anybody can shoot down most.
Very helpful indeed.
* * * *
What Postol said about Iron Dome, I hope I get this correct:
The interceptor is supposed to explode and scatter its munition in a way that that munition (think cluster bomb) pierces the missile´s rear where the propulsion is located so it gets broken. Because it is far more difficult to actually hit the missile with the tip of the interceptor.
To do that you need to navigate the interceptor via radar to the targeted missile which puts a range limit due to limited size of the radar that can be built. But he added if that could be overcome so could some limitations with the intercepting.
However the cluster concept of Iron Dome doesn´t really work out for obvious physical reasons: Too many elements there cannot be controlled when the interception actually takes place.
Postol was right with Patriot 30 years ago. Even US Congress had to concede. Which didn´t keep Raytheon to make tons of money simply by burying Postol´s reports.
* * *
Here from 2012 a 2-hour discussion on C-SPAN on missile defense by US experts where Postol gets a bit nasty (not unlike Martyanov actually) – but that´s just the way he is, very honest, too much may be. He tells his colleagues their numbers don´t match or are not real.
And: Postol and Martyanov both criticize that US tests use ideal, non-realistic conditions which will never occure under wartime conditions. And even under those the systems fail.
February 1, 2012
Ballistic Missile Defense
Participants spoke about U.S. ballistic missile defenses and the future of U.S. foreign policy. Among the topics they addressed were the current nature of the nuclear threat, future deterrence strategies, and non-proliferation efforts. They responded to questions from the audience
https://www.c-span.org/video/?304109-1/ballistic-missile-defense
with:
Jack Citrin
Director University of California, Berkeley->Institute of Governmental Studies
Michael Nacht
Professor University of California, Berkeley->Goldman (Richard and Rhoda) School of Public Policy
Ted Postol
Professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Harold Smith
Assistant Secretary Department of Defense->Atomic Energy
Dean Wilkening
Director (Former) Stanford University->Center for International Security and Cooperation
* * * *
Martyanov speaks about S-500/550 which nobody else seems to know anything about. However in the West nobody cares about those in public anyway. So may be he is right after all. He quotes some news items, too . Not only confidential private sources. If only one single short report.
But if S-500 really downed a MIRV what does that mean?
He claims in some future a true missile defense for RU on SDI scale is real.
* * * *
Dmitry Stefanovich and other Russians spoke at the Valdai Club 2023.
Back then they argued that on a broad scale there is no big missile defense in sight.
“(…)However, the global missile defense system
being created by the United States is not capable of repelling a massive
missile attack today and will not be capable of doing that in the foreseeable
future. American declarative policy is still based on the principle of deterring
missile attacks from Russia or China through the threat of retaliation.24 Missile
defense is positioned as an instrument of repelling limited missile strikes from
North Korea or Iran(…)”
– Hower this report was finished January 2023 according to the cover –
THE SHOOT DOWN/MISS THE TARGET DILEMMA: THE EVOLUTION OF MISSILE DEFENSE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR ARMS CONTROL.
Valdai Discussion Club Report. 2023.
https://valdaiclub.com/files/40258/
abstract
https://pircenter.org/en/editions/3-2024-missile-defense-and-arms-control-valdai-s-perspective/
Stefanovich in reference to Oreshnik wrote on TWITTER:
“(…)5. The statement about the impossibility of interception by existing and future missile defense systems is impressive, but, as usual, the devil is in the details – under good conditions, anything can be intercepted by anything. But the target seems to be very challenging indeed.(…)”
https://nitter.poast.org/KomissarWhipla/status/1859703744637829331#m
And this by Stefanovich after Oreshnik
STRATDELA Newsletter
Nov 25, 2024
https://1dkv.substack.com/p/stratdela-31
on Oreshnik only this Russian link from Nov. 23rd
https://iz.ru/1795365/dmitrii-kornev/oresnik-rascvel
* * * *
Go figure.
It almost appears as if the officials don´t go too far to not run the risk of being proven wrong eventually.
Martyanov is contradicting Putin if he said what you say he said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx28dzvxjyjo
Pretty much all commentators think it is very implausible that anything could intercept a missile traveling at >Mach 10. So I would be curious to see how Martyanov defends his claim.
Then it´s my incorrect English:
Martyanov would never say that you can intercept a hypersonic, unless you have a Russian AD-system which might be able to (S500/550). We don´t know for sure because the Americans have no hypersonics. So it was never tried.
Appreciate the clarification.
Again, I agree with the consensus, Martyanov is regularly too shrill, partisan, and dismissive for his own good. But he might overcome his habits. We’ll see soon enough!
Martyanov was an officer of the Soviet equivalent of the Coast Guard
I am not sure but I think that equating the Soviet Coast Guard with the US Coast Guard may be a mistake. The Soviets did and the Russian Federation do not do things in the same way as most Western nations.
I believe the USSR Coast Guard and GRU “border patrols” were considered first response combat forces to buy time for a mass mobilization.
The name reminds me of the Canadian position “Clerk of the Privy Council”. This translates into “The Head of the Canadian Civil Service”.
This will be interesting.
Regarding the kinetic vs. nuclear dispute, a few thoughts (and I apologize if any of this has been covered and I missed it):
1) Total energy is not necessarily the best metric (it is rather like GDP in economics). The way that the energy is dispersed is important. In the case of a nuke, the explosive pressure is three-dimensional; with the hypersonic kinetic munition the force is linear (one-dimensional) and the pressure initially confined to a small area (two-dimensional) — perhaps a nail is a better analogy than the head of a hammer, at least with respect to the immediate impact — with the energy spreading as it strikes subsequent material. Free fall might even prove sufficient (though course-correction and maneuverability would still come into play.)
2) The destructive efficacy is mission-dependent. Am I trying to wipe out a broad swath of surface objects, or eliminate deep targets in a relatively confined area?
3) Nukes arriving at mach 10 make no sense. To my knowledge nukes are usually detonated at height above the target as it was determined early on that this would have the greatest destructive effect.
4) However, there are, generally speaking, two velocities in question: terminal velocity of the munition, and the average velocity from launch to munition release point. So this still could serve as a useful platform for delivering a nuclear package a certain distance in a short period of time.
5) Given that a nuke is a high-value payload, the concern would not be with speed but with probability of interception. When combined with decoys (or even active decoys, as an earlier Millennium 7 post linked here described), terminal velocity would only have to be fast enough to assist in reducing the estimated probability of interception to whatever value they find acceptable.
6) Another consideration is economics. The kinetic variant may be an order of magnitude less expensive than its nuclear partner, even considering whatever expense exotic materials production incurs. Maybe not as much bang (though, again, a different kind of bang) for the buck.
Hamstak raises a point I’ve been wanting to see discussed by commenters more competent than I.
Given that explosives typically dissipate their energy in three dimensions, I had been thinking of kinetics as more comparable to a shaped charge. But as Hamstak explains, this difference stands to be even more pronounced. I had read in some of the preliminary discussions of the Oreshnik that each kinetic projectile might be 7 centimeters in diameter. Imagine then, the kinetic (rather than 3D explosive) being applied along a single dimension aligned with the trajectory of the projectile to a cross-section of target material 7 centimeters across, of course with energy dissipations along that cross-section through the outward propagation of thermal and mechanical shock as adjacent material is liquified and vaporized (and plasma shock?).
Bust out the calculus as integration is required:
The kinetic impact will produce shock waves through materials that will extend from the projectile at the point of impact and around the projectile as it moves through the target. The kinetic damage should be a hole at the surface and get larger with depth until the energy is dissipated. If one of these were to hit a peat bog there might not be a whole lot of damage other than a really big splat, but anything less compressible and more dense would respond as if hit with a small but intensely powerful (tons of force, not kt) sledgehammer.
The physicists in the audience can expand on this.
Effects of kinetic penetrators have been studied a lot in the context or armor. There even are Youtube channels with simulations of varius scenarios.
https://www.youtube.com/@SYsimulations/videos
A further question for the chemical engineers. It’s been rumored that some modern military explosives may be exploiting some newly established properties of metal (aluminum) powders as part of the overall chemical mix. Is it conceivable that the kinetic projectile, presumably of tungsten or like material, itself has special explosive properties of its own as it is vaporized on impact?
Aluminum explosives have been used for a long time (Thermite), for both military and civilian applications (the basic reaction, called Goldschmidt Process, has been known since the end of 19th century). When heated to a very high temperature, Aluminum reacts explosively with various metal oxides (e.g. iron and copper). Presumably, more complicated mixtures, using other metals and oxides, are possible with varying effects.
Thermite is incendiary mixture. For explosive purposes, powdered aluminium is mixed with RDX and TNT.
Dust explosions have been around as long as there’s been dust. Powdered metal simply acts as an efficient detonator for the dust.
Detonator-> bursting charge-> boom-> metal shavings-> confined dust -> big boom
I hope that I don’t get a visit from ATF for posting this (hi guys!)
Regarding 3): The point of having a nuclear warhead arriving with a vehicle maneuvering, powered or not (the latter would be a hypersonic glide vehicle), at Mach 10 is not to enhance the explosive yield but to make missile harder, if not impossible, to shoot down. You will get the nuke whether you want it or not. At these speeds, even hitting it close enough with a nuclear-tipped anti-ballistic missile would be challenging (but it could be possible, at the cost of setting off an electromagnetic pulse, EMP, over your own territory).
Specifically against nuclear-armed hypersonic missiles, this would also be aided by the fact that a nuclear anti-ballistic missile aimed against it would not necessarily need to destroy the missile directly, but merely to cause a “fizzle” in its own nuclear warhead. This happens through the intense, quite far-reaching neutron in an uncontrolled way, initiating chain reactions in the fissile material of the incoming enemy nuke and thereby not just a premature but also much less powerful nuclear detonation than if the warhead had been allowed to reach its target and detonate as designed.
Indeed, this was the reasoning behind the nuclear-armed anti-ballistic missiles deployed by both sides during the 50’s and 60’s. (But on the other hand, what also makes these missile harder to track, let alone follow in their maneuvers, is the plasma shroud that is created by the intense heat generation.)
It needs to be remembered that even the V-2 missile built by Germany at the end of the war traveled at close Mach 5, which is the traditional limit for hypersonic speeds. But it was a ballistic missile, that is, basically an artllery shell with a fixed, completely predictable ballistic trajectory once it had finished its boost phase. That is, we have had missiles traveling at hypersonic speeds since the late 40’s/early 50’s, but certainly not what we refer to “hypersonic” missiles in current discourse.
What is new about the latter, and much more difficult to design (and here the Soviets/Russians have always been decades ahead of the US and other Western nations) and to defend against, is that they are able to maneuver at these speeds, especially inside the atmosphere.
This is by the way, of course, a very common source of confusion.
Now I know maneuverable does not automatically mean re-targetable, but the question this begs is whether these can be retargeted to hit moving targets (esp. ships).
“Free fall might even prove sufficient (though course-correction and maneuverability would still come into play.)”
That should apply to comment 5), not 2) — sorry about that.
Since most of us have found that important info is not all going to be found in a single source or statement, the “Britain” detail in Urie’s article need not upstage the realities being ignored by willful Western “leaders.”
Nothing demonstrates better the intellectual and moral decline of the US that the insistence shown in the Congress, and by individuals like Sullivan, on Ukrainians recruiting the younger.
And starting wars. Demonstrating the lizard brain has primacy over higher functions.
A population of 400 million fundamentally incapable of desiring or creating peace.
Imo it hasn’t been a priority for a long time. Not even to avoid a genocide.
I’m not a science guy at all, but over the years Putler has spoken of Russian weapons exploiting new physical principles. Hearing the term ‘plasma shock’ used in preliminary speculations about Oreshnik, one can at least wonder if the plasma envelope itself lends properties to the strike. Generally speaking, is some fraction of the thermal/kinetic energy required to produce and maintain a plasma field not itself “stored” at the time of impact?
Plasma is a fourth state or phase of matter–phase changes from solid to liquid and liquid to gas entail disproportionate energy transfers. Does plasma’s rapid collision w/ matter in other phases produce little explored effects?
For example, from the journal Physics:
‘unlike the shockwave from an airplane traveling at Mach speed, which dissipates its kinetic energy into heat through molecular collisions, a shockwave in a collisionless plasma (a collisionless shock) involves a more complicated dissipation mechanism. The energy is divided up between the plasma constitutents, with some going to ions, some to electrons, and a fraction to the generation of magnetic fields ‘
That was a collision less plasma study–what about plasma in collision?
Any physicists out there wanting to take a crack at this?
Is this Putler in room with you right now?
As I recall reading some time ago, the plasma envelope makes a high speed object not visible on the radar screen, it means that the AD – air defense systems are not able to track it nor lock in on this object.
AFAIK it’s a bit more complicated than that. The plasma envelope is not the same density, composition or electric charge all around the vehicle, but it’s distributed “oddly”. Especially the lower pressure area behind the hypersonic vessel seems to attract a positive charged “tail”.
So, some parts of the plasma shield attenuate the radar pulse, while some parts actually reflect it better. What this – and the sheer velocity of the the target – causes at the radar receiver is a sort of a mess. The echo gets compressed, replicated, faded and distorted all at the same time. Basically the signal processing can’t really make any sense of the range or the speed of the target, but the direction can be deduced with some luck and guesswork.
Or something along those lines.
Postol said that gliding on the atmosphere generated plenty of heat for thermal imaging satellites to see. The glide extends the range of the vehicle. They wanted the West to see it.
It would stand out like the sun on infrared.
Calling president Putin names degrades your comment.
I should clarify: My use of the term ‘Putler’ was ironic–intended as a caricature of the obsessive focus on VV Putin as a sort of Scarlet Pimpernel behind every mishap befalling the West. I’ve come to use it so habitually that I sometimes forget to ask what impressions it makes in particular contexts.
For my part, I consider him to be perhaps the most important statesman of the past hundred years, and, assuming there are historians to look back, and no doubt of the 21st century.
The Chief Designer, builder of the Integral is now PUTIN! the Great Oz of the Kremlin.
Urie’s piece of unhinged speculative fiction about blowing holes the size of Britain in the eastern seaboard of the U.S. is reminiscent of those Sputnik days described by Tom Wolfe in The Right Stuff. The two things that we can be certain of is that the Russian Federation won’t make peace in Ukraine unless any deal is brokered and guaranteed by China, and that “meeting the threat” of their “super-duper-hyper-sonic weapons” will be another excuse why Americans can’t have nice things…
The new capability provided by Oreshnik is that it can destroy extensive underground structures which are now indefensible. This puts all Ukrainian underground command and control facilities at risk, including Zelensky’s hideout.
What happens if those hit the San Andreas Fault?
Or the Yellowstone caldera?
Geologist here: Little to nothing would happen.
Yellowstone visitor: There would be multi-colored mud everywhere. (Maybe the mud would turn to hard shards and pulverize Jacson Hole.) ;)
OK, then. The San Andreas Faultline it is.
Another geologist here and I agree with Redleg. It might interfere with the plumbing of “Old Faithful” but, for a seismic event or eruption to happen would be highly unlikely. An atomic blast is capable of triggering a blip on seismographs around the world and has been historically used to identify underground nuclear testing. I’d be surprised if the worlds seismographs registered the Oreshnik hit.
“If Trump imagines that the war in Ukraine will be ended with the three Bs, belligerence, bullshit, and bluster, this seems a weak plan. The second-order problem for Trump is that his planned Greater Israel war against the entire Middle East depends on first ending the US war in Ukraine.”
Just spitballin’, but:
If the US govt has no leverage in negotiations with Russia, Russia could possibly tack on conditions about the Middle East. Maybe a concern they also have?
One of the “non-negotiable” conditions to the peace with Russia is removal of all the sanctions and return of
all the stolen assets. As stated recently by Lavrov, nobody in Asia wants to fight another war, everybody wants peace. The only leverage we have is a strong US Dollar.
Someone is missing what the weapon does.
With kinetic only rounds it is a way to take out hardened (underground) targets. Dropping one on the city where I live will net you 36 impact craters and the accompanying impressive steam explosions with some tremors if they manage to get to the bedrock that is several hundred meters below the city. But the city as a whole won’t stop functioning with that kind of superficial damage.
Now replace the kinetic impactors with nukes and the city is finished due to the extensive surface level destruction caused.
Same thing goes for a lot of military/logistic installations. For example you drop both types on a military airfield, kinetic to punch through the bunkers protecting planes, nuclear to remove everything on the surface.
The shock wave from the impact will crack all the underground pipes in the cities, it means no water, sewer, nat gas and other underground infrastructure. It may take years to repair. If the impact is on a military base, then all the vertical lunch silos will be cracked and useless – kind of like disarming our offensive ICBM bases without creating a nuclear pollution.
That was my first reaction: if used on a large enough scale, it could disable all ICBM silos in a single stroke.
Probably some islands that Russia may want to target – unless they want the same dunces re-emerging after strikes.
The problem is you assume things.
For example a city having a layer of bedrock fairly close to the surface. Yes if there is bedrock at 20 meters there will be enough resistance that you will get your shock wave.
If that bedrock is 200 meters down (actually more in the city I live in) there is not enough resistance to generate a shock wave like that and most of the energy will be in the steam geyser flowing back out of the hole that has been punched.
Another assumption is that the shock wave is massive, it won’t it might be several times the size of the impact crater but that is not the size needed to crack even all the pipes of a city district let alone an entire city.
You want the kind of damage you suggest on a city then take out the substations that connect to the electricity network, any power plant inside the city, water supply, and sewage (which is generally on a level above cities, unless you talk about million+ people living there).
Same thing with ICBM silos. There is a reason that the Oreshnik impactors are implied to be incredibly agile. Missing the ICBM silo by as much as the size of the impact crater will leave it intact enough that it can still launch the nuke it contains. So you basically need to punch through the cover and into the silo itself, wrecking the missile in the process. And Russia basically told the world it can do that when Putin implied that the (anti-)ICBM/IRBM installation in Poland was on the target list.
No he didn’t – as the installation in Poland is above ground.
Pls don’t add to the confusion by making things up.
Yes. Decades to repair. It might take years to turn off all the leaks.
“The non-nuclear ICBM can hit any city in the world, travels so fast that it can’t be stopped, and one missile can destroy a land mass the size of Britain.”
This doesn’t pass the smell test.
Back of napkin high school physics would indicate much of what’s being asserted here regarding weapon capabilities is total bunk.
1KT TNT (small nuclear payload a la AIR-2Genie) = 4.1 Terajoules
100,000KG at Mach 10 (3402 m/s) = 0.58 TJ
According to https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/, even a TSAR bomba would not totally destroy Great Britain, and that’s 100MT or TNT, but let’s assume destroying half of the landmass is good enough.
An equivalent explosion (418399 TJ) using only kinetic energy would require a mass of 72,302,456,520 KG.
72 BILLION KILOGRAMS.
The Asteroid Bennu has a diameter of ~0.5km and weights around 73 Billion Kilograms. (https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/asteroidfact.html)
Have the Russians learned how to launch asteroids?
Merely on a remote note:
I assume the RU nuclear doctrine was also a reaction to the malign instrumentalisation of Art. 51 by the US and NATO in the case of Ukraine. As intern. law has no definition of covert proxies being equipped for future wars by nuclear powers. And once set up WMDs are trumping any intern. law. So obviously the UN needs updates in this area. Or it really becomes useless. Now that everyone knows how its being “done”.
p.s. oh and most importantly of course – Oreshnik and follow-ups as non-nuclear wapons for now probably do not fall under Art. 35 of the Geneva Convention:
“Using area weapons against a city, even if it contained military targets, would be against additional protocol I of the Geneva Convention. Nuclear weapons are arguably against Article 35. Russia signed/ratified, the US signed but did not ratify.”
https://nitter.poast.org/EnkiResearch/status/1861088540643205220#m
Good catch. This would not be an area weapon based on what we know.
These Geneva Conventions will be cited by Israel as it operates in Gaza and Beirut no doubt. Perhaps Blinken has views ? Or maybe USA finds Hanoi to be a non-city ?
Which Conventions has USA chosen to uphold in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Yemen, or Yugoslavia or Russia ? Did the Chinese Embassy qualify ? Or the TV station in Belgrade ? Or the bridges ? Or the water supply ?
Which is why I am so outraged over those scientists and WMD and non-proliferation experts in the West who hand out this kind of info. Their utter double standard is simply sick. Because as you say none of those examples or war crimes or other violations are ever present in their discourse and (a)moral framework. Those events are out of the window. Gone forever. However the countries which were then targeted did not forget.
In the good old days of the Cold War; game theory suggested, instead of a zero sum game whose outcome would be MAD, the object was to ‘imbalance the oppositon (but not to the point of a nuclear exchange). The ‘unbalanced’ side would then work its way back to balance and then toss a ‘hot potato’ to the other side to imbalance it. Back and forth this would go. In classical terms, E.G. First the US imbalances Russia with Ukraine and sanctions, Russia regroups and tosses back a Oreshnik hypersonic missile. Now it’s the US’s turn to rebalance & upstage. But why is Putin grinning. Recall Reagan’s Star Wars and the USSR’s inability to compete with guns and butter, on which account , it supposdedly dissolved. Have the tables been turned? How is the US going to revamp its military & domestic infrastructure, reduce its debt servicing & inflation, stop printing money ad infitum to stay socially cohesive, and outgun the Russians all at the same time?
How is the US going to revamp its military & domestic infrastructure, reduce its debt servicing & inflation, stop printing money ad infitum to stay socially cohesive, and outgun the Russians all at the same time?
Neoliberal states are incapable of waging prolonged industrial wars. The US can’t.
@ T Martin …
The last bit in your comment above is all about everything post WWII and Elite driven social agenda/s – see Powell/Citi memo et al. The so called money printing is more about distribution and its social productivity. Now that Western driven globalism has been nixed the elites can only double down on the agenda or have it go splat on their faces – lose control of the narrative. That means they are out of a job or become increasingly irrelevant in shaping political outcomes, all very path driven.
A couple of things ….
A. Why would Russia deploy this system in response to a red line if the results were weak – does not compute.
B. It is observable that this system has similarities to celestial objects hitting the earth. If that was not interesting enough, you get six of them in a line hitting in secession after initial impact. So regardless of the thermal properties you have the material shock wave/s rebounding – crack, crack, crack, six times. Size of the crater is not indicative of force due to back fill IMO.
C. Atmospheric explosions of celestial objects should be noted here. If that is a possibility – whoboy …
D. Would be interesting to see the results of strike if on an angle.
You can answer C and D with the Earth Impact Effects Program link above. Crank up the speed for atmospheric explosions.
Thanks Steve H.
I am familiar with the topic and why I pointed out the 6 impacts out of 6 sets in relationship to geo/materials harmonics in conjunction with thermal dynamics all in less than a blink of an eye.
I am very curious about the state of the impactor – anything left or is it totally vaporized.
I would add – for bonus points – which nation landed a probe on Venus and it lasted long enough to send back some video of the surface decades ago. They had this mad atmospheric chamber like none other on the orb and allowed them to do testing under actual conditions. Might have something to do with advance metallurgy thingy.
Americans seem to never take into consideration facts or things that are not their own.
The technicalities about the physics of Orezhnik are trivial, in the sense that they are years old and well known but just not taken seriously by much of scientific establishment, due to other polemic aspects of the general theory they are part of in the work of its main pioneer, Jean-Pierre Petit. Interviews and conferences of Petit are available on line since long. In some of his interviews he explains that the scientists who were most interesting in his idea about …. hypersonic objects and plasma … were … Russians, at different congresses and conventions.
For instance: https://www.youtube.com/live/VanOVShKsCM
If you listen to Lavrov and Medvedev, on the Russian side Trump makes no difference, because a staunch rabid anti-Russian vector is constitutive of American policies (and British). It is true that USA has put itself in a no-exit oneway lane because they have pushed Russia into a position of no return and no deals. Russia has been cut off the $ ecosystem and it can t come back. There is nothing to negotiate. War must end on Russian terms or Russia must be attempted destroyed, with the consequences that will follow.
Minsk deal in 2015 was the best deal possible, and in December 2021, the Russian proposal kept former Ukraine borders. Everytime Russia was denied and deceived. So there can be no deals, because Russia can’t trust USA at all. It’s over.
If the rest of Europe had embraced Russia, what the USA or UK thought about Russia would not amount to much. The USA and UK just stir up old divisions and prejudices.
absolutely. They have re-engineered the centuries old geopolitical fractures that in fact did built-up in the 13th and in end 19th c. & 20th c. converged into the Galicians factor. UK was running a network of stay-behind Banderist groups in Western SSR Ukraine, post-1945, and they are/were in familiar waters.
The huge issue is that German, Polish, Scandinavian conservative elites and the newer generation of apparatchiks across all the spectrum are brainwashed into this. The level of warmongering is equal to the one under 3rd German Reich, the difference being that these days they can’t send in big amounts of mobilized troops.
The other aspect in this is that it is no longer just about Russia it is about “West” wagging war against everybody.
We can read about a Kellogg/Trump deal proposal, that is just yet another Minsk, ie. a tentative to lure Russia, and “peace-keeping” troops from EU countries will just be a way to relaunch war in few years.
This CAN’T be. USA is stuck in Biden’s gang policy until Ukraine has run out of men and/or ballistic war on Russia.
Kellogg/Trump are just reading lines from the Yugoslav script, which USA have been using all along.
It is bemusing to read an Oreshnik could eradicate the U.K. since U.K. is 40% size of Ukraine which means Russia holds an area equivalent to England in effect.
Oreshnik as Mark Felton showed in a recent video is not essential to deal with U.K. as Kh-101 could be as effective from 2000km away on a TU-22 or TU-160 or TU-95 not to mention Kilo Class submarines with 3M14 cruise missiles.
U.K. has no air defence and vulnerable oil pipelines throughout the country and gas hubs on the East Coast. Both air and naval assets are concentrated in limited sites without protection
Oreshnik is not the ideal weapon though it has the stage at present. It would of course be ideal for Barrow or Faslane or Portsmouth or GCHQ or Menwith Hill or Fylingdales or Boulmer or Croughton and maybe Vauxhall Cross or BAe at Warton
Then again, we shall see
yes the text has mixed up things. Whole UK destruction by aftermaths of huge nuclear MIRV strike was talked about in 2022, at the time there were test launches of Sarmat. A head of Lib-Dems Russian party made the statement “if there´s nuclear war we will hit UK first”
Why are the surveillance cameras turned off in Orwellian London? Would never happen on the Illinois Tollway.
No one has claimed they are off and how would they know ?
What was claimed is that Webcams are no longer functional so the public has no overview