Burevestnik nuclear cruise missile: Russia’s absolute deterrence trump card
Burevestnik nuclear cruise missile: Russia’s absolute deterrence trump card
A test has demonstrated the missile’s ability to evade enemy missile defense systems, Chief of General Staff Gerasimov has told President Putin.
Here’s what makes Burevestnik a strategic gamechanger.
Nuclear powered
The defining feature of the 9M730 Burevestnik (Russian ‘Storm petrel’, NATO reporting name SSC-X-9 Skyfall) is its nuclear propulsion system. Its small onboard nuclear reactor gives it effectively an unlimited range.
Unlimited range means:
🟠 Сapability to loiter in the air for days on end
🟠 Ability to circumnavigate the entire globe, if necessary, to reach its target
🟠 Capacity to evade concentrated defenses, and strike from unexpected attack vectors
Stealth
🟠 Since it’s a cruise missile, the Burevestnik can hug the ground on approach at altitudes below enemy radar’s ability to detect, making interception challenging if not impossible.
🟠 That’s because no traditional ballistic flight trajectory and no range limits means there’s no point where defenses can be deployed en masse to stop it.
Strategic response
🟠 First unveiled by Putin in 2018, the Burevestnik’s development began in the early 2000s in reaction to the US pullout from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and Pentagon efforts to ring Russia with missile defense systems (Aegis, Aegis Ashore, including in Poland and Romania).
🟠 The Burevestnik and other groundbreaking strategic Russian systems like it (Avangard HGV, Zircon naval hypersonic missile, Kinzhal air-launched missile, Poseidon unmanned submarine, Sarmat heavy ICBM) guarantee Russia’s ability to respond to aggression, even in an enemy decapitation strike scenario.
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