The incident of Russia launching a new missile into the city of Dnipro in Ukraine has raised concerns among the US and NATO. Russian President Putin declared that air defense systems cannot intercept Oreshnik missiles.
President Vladimir Putin announced on November 22 that Russia would continue testing the hypersonic Oreshnik missile that it launched into Ukraine the day before and move towards starting mass production of this new missile.
Speaking on television, Mr. Putin stated that this missile is very difficult to intercept: "Currently, there are no countermeasures and no means in the world to intercept such missiles. I want to emphasize once again that we will continue to test this latest weapon, and then move on to mass production."
The formidable power of the hypersonic Oreshnik missile
The new medium-range ballistic missile named Oreshnik that Russia used in an attack on Ukraine on November 21 is a weapon with nuclear capabilities that Moscow had not previously disclosed.
Mr. Putin added that the attack on the city of Dnipro was a successful test of one of Russia's newest medium-range missile systems in combat conditions. Engineers named the missile Oreshnik, which means hazel in Russian. President Putin stated that this missile was deployed "in a non-nuclear hypersonic configuration" and the test was successful as the missile hit its target.
Speed
President Putin stated that air defense systems cannot intercept Oreshnik, as it travels at speeds of Mach 10, or 2.5 to 3 km/s.
Hypersonic missiles travel at speeds many times that of sound, with the ability to maneuver during flight, making them harder to track and intercept. "Modern air defense systems cannot intercept missiles like that," Mr. Putin asserted.
In a statement on Telegram, the Ukrainian Military Intelligence Agency (GUR) reported that the missile only took 15 minutes to fly from the Kapustin Yar testing ground in Russia's Astrakhan region to the city of Dnipro, covering a distance of 800 km and reaching a final speed of Mach 11.
Explaining why the Oreshnik missile is difficult to intercept, former Russian army colonel Viktor Litovkin stated: “Firstly, Oreshnik is a medium-range missile that can fly distances from 1,000 km to 5,500 km. Secondly, it is a hypersonic missile capable of flying at speeds of Mach 10." No air defense or missile defense system in the world can intercept such hypersonic missiles, Mr. Litovkin emphasized.
"The West has no missiles flying at such speeds and also lacks suitable intercepting capabilities. Although the US has repeatedly claimed to have missiles like Oreshnik, they have never disclosed the test flights of those missiles. They only announced missiles flying at speeds of 5.5 times the speed of sound or Mach 5.5. However, hypersonic speed begins at Mach 6-7."
The operational principle of this missile is similar to that of the Kinzhal hypersonic missile launched from the supersonic MiG-31K aircraft, or the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, which is accelerated by using the UR-100N UTTKh intercontinental ballistic missile as the propulsion engine, expert Viktor Litovkin explained.
Warhead
The Oreshnik missile could carry between 3 to 6 warheads, military expert Viktor Baranets speculated. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Intelligence Agency believes the missile has 6 warheads. On the other hand, Mr. Igor Korotchenko, editor of the Moscow-based National Defence magazine, noted that based on video footage of the attack, Oreshnik is likely capable of carrying multiple independently guided warheads. In this attack, those were conventional warheads. However, the missile can also carry nuclear warheads.
The fact that "the warheads hit their targets almost simultaneously shows that this missile system operates "very effectively," Mr. Korotchenko commented, considering it a "masterpiece of modern Russian solid-fuel military missiles."
Former Colonel Litovkin stated: "The missile accelerates all of its warheads to hypersonic speed, and the warheads also fly to their targets at hypersonic speed."
Some military experts speculate that Russia's new missile could carry at least six independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV). They believe Oreshnik takes only a short time to reach key NATO targets in Europe. According to some assessments, the missile could reach the US Aegis Ashore missile base in Redzikowo, Poland, within 8 to 11 minutes.
Range
President Putin stated that Oreshnik is a medium-range missile. Typically, medium-range ballistic missiles (IRBM) have ranges from 1,000 to 5,500 km, one level lower than intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). Military expert Ilya Kramnik also noted that the range of Oreshnik could be at the higher end of the medium-range missile category, around 3,000 to 5,000 km.
"This is the first time in Russian history that medium-range missiles have been used in combat," commented Dmitry Kornev, editor of the Military Russia website.
Origin
The US Department of Defense believes that Oreshnik is a "test missile," developed based on Russia's RS-26 Rubezh ballistic missile. However, there is very little information about this missile.
Rubezh is a medium-range ballistic missile (IRBM), produced in 2011 and successfully tested in 2012. It has the capability to carry a nuclear warhead, weighing 36,000 kg with a range of 5,800 km. However, Russia halted the development and deployment of this missile in 2018 to shift to the production of the hypersonic glide vehicle Avangard.
Russian weapon expert Yan Matveyev believes that the development of the Oreshnik missile will involve two phases with quite high costs, thus the likelihood of Russia producing this missile in large quantities is low.
Weapon expert Pavel Podvig, Director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, believes that with the above range, "Oreshnik can threaten almost all of Europe but is unlikely to threaten the US."
On November 21, President Putin declared that Russia would "consider deploying additional medium and short-range missiles based on the actions of the US and its allies and partners in Washington."