On November 21, a new type of Russian missile with six warheads It hit Dnipro, Ukraine. Senior officials said it caused limited damagebut the first combat use of such a design, which Russian President Vladimir Putin called unstoppable, has drawn scrutiny from Western military experts.
An examination by two of these experts of the recovered remains of the new intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), known in Russian as Oreshnik or hazel, showed how dropped multiple payloads over the target areaa characteristic of ICBMs.
After the missile attack, Putin said that the Oreshnik was hypersonic and could not be intercepted, but Jeffrey Lewis and other experts pointed out that all ballistic missiles of that range are hypersonic and that Missile interceptors like Israel’s Arrow 3 and the United States’ SM-3 Block 2A were designed to destroy them.
The two largest pieces of debris were part of its warhead bus, which sits atop the rocket booster and eventually drops the warheads from space toward their targets, said Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center James Martin for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California.
Small gas thrusters allow the warhead bus to maneuver above the atmosphere for precise targeting, Lewis said, noting that the “spider-shaped” piece of debris appeared to include them.
The other large section of debris contained guides, fuel tanks and other electronic components, he said. The bus supports MIRVs, each of which carries a warhead and can hit a different target.
None of the technologies used in the Russian intermediate-range ballistic missiles that hit Ukraine are novel, but examining them up close and first-hand could provide interesting insights into the latest Russian missile designs, he said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment for this story.
He missilewhich according to Putin hit a Ukrainian military facility, derived from RS-26an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, which was tested five times but never entered service, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Lewis said the new design had likely removed one stage of the RS-26’s booster, reducing its range. He noted that using the Oreshnik with conventional warheads was an expensive means “to not cause so much destruction.”
A U.S. official, who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters that Russia had notified Washington shortly before the Nov. 21 attack. A second official said the United States had informed kyiv and its allies to prepare for the possible use of that weapon.
Senior Ukrainian officials told Reuters this week that the missile used to attack Dnipro carried no explosives and caused little damage.
At a press conference after the missile launch, Putin said it was a direct response to attacks on Russia by Ukrainian forces with US and British missiles. He warned that the war could be escalating into a global conflict and that Russia could attack military facilities of Western countries that support Ukraine.
Lewis noted that the high reentry velocity was enough to cause damage even if the warhead was made of non-explosive material, such as metal. The warheads descended on the Dnipro in a steep anglehe pointed out, which implied that the missile had been launched on an “elevated” trajectory: fired at an unusually high apogee, or maximum altitude, to reduce range.
North Korea often uses this method in its missile tests to avoid geopolitically sensitive landing sites.
Kapustin Yar, from where the missile was launched, is only 700 kilometers from the point of impact, so an attack from a high point is plausible, said Ankit Panda, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, based in the United States. Joined. Lewis noted that his reported flight time of 15 minutes would have taken him about 1,500 kilometers on a normal trajectory.
The precision observed in the videos of the attack matches what would be needed for a nuclear weapon, but not for a conventional one.Alberque said.
In videos of the attack, each warhead appeared to drop smaller charges that could be seen upon impact with the ground. Tim Wright of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said that if the missile used such submunitions, accuracy would be less of an issue because: “It would distribute them over a wide area. “That makes it useful for attacking large installations.”
Lewis warned that, Given the cost, using this type of ballistic missile to attack Ukraine could be more of a psychological tactic than a military one.. “If it were inherently terrifying, (Putin) would just use it. But that’s not enough,” Lewis said. “He had to use it and then do one press conference and another and say, ‘Hey, this thing is really scary, you should be scared.'”
(with information from Reuters)
