The missile fired by Russia at Ukraine last week, hailed by Putin as a new kind of experimental hypersonic weapon, was actually an application of old technology used for many years in intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), six military experts told Reuters.
An examination by two of these experts of the debris recovered from the new intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), known in Russian as the Oreshnik, or hazel tree, showed how it dropped multiple payloads across the target area, a characteristic of ICBMs.
After the missile strike, Putin said the Oreshnik was hypersonic and could not be intercepted. But Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, noted that all ballistic missiles of that range are hypersonic, and that missile interceptors such as Israel’s Arrow 3 and the U.S. SM-3 Block 2A were designed to destroy them.
After examining images of the wreckage, Lewis said the two largest pieces of debris were part of its warhead bus, which sits atop the booster and eventually drops the warheads from space onto their targets.
Small gas thrusters allow the bus to maneuver above the atmosphere for precise targeting, Lewis said, noting that the “spider shaped” piece of debris appeared to include those. The other large section of wreckage contained guidance, fuel tanks and other electronics, he said. The bus allows for MIRVs, each of which carries a warhead and can hit a separate mark.
None of the technology in the Russian IRBM that hit Ukraine is novel but getting a close, hands-on look could yield interesting insight into the latest Russian missile designs, he said.
“This is a new capability, but this is not a new capability that represents a dramatic change in the way that conventional weapons are developed,” he said. “It’s a series of old technologies that have been put together in a new way.”
Russia’s defence ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment for this story.
The missile, which Putin said struck a Ukrainian military facility, was derived from the RS-26, an 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 most likely removed a stage of the booster from the RS-26, reducing its range. He noted that using the Oreshnik with conventional warheads was an expensive means “to deliver not that much destruction”.
The United States considered a program using ICBMs without nuclear warheads called Conventional Prompt Strike, but abandoned it because “it was stupid”, said William Alberque, a visiting fellow at the Henry L. Stimson Center. A major problem with putting conventional warheads on ICBMs is that it is easy for adversaries to mistakenly think they are under nuclear attack – confusion that could accidentally lead to a nuclear conflagration.
A U.S. official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters that Russia had notified Washington shortly before the Nov. 21 strike. A second official said the U.S. had briefed Kyiv and allies to prepare for the possible use of such a weapon.
Tim Wright of the International Institute for Strategic Studies said that showed Russia was aware of that risk and wanted to mitigate it. Senior Ukrainian officials told Reuters this week that the missile used to attack Dnipro carried no explosives and caused limited damage.
In an address on state television after the missile was launched, Putin said it was a direct response to strikes on Russia by Ukrainian forces with U.S. and British missiles. He warned the war could be escalating toward a global conflict, and that Russia could strike at military installations of Western countries supporting Ukraine.
A former Kremlin advisor, Sergei Markov, told Reuters the use of the weapon was symbolic, sending a message from Putin to the West: “back off”.
Lewis noted that the sheer speed of reentry was enough to cause damage even if the warhead were non-explosive material such as metal. The warheads descended on Dnipro at a steep angle, he noted, which implied the missile had been launched on a “lofted” trajectory: fired to 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 spots.
Kapustin Yar, where the missile was launched, is only about 800km from the impact point, so a lofted attack is plausible, said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Lewis noted that its reported flight time of 15 minutes would have taken it about 1,500 km on a normal trajectory.
The accuracy seen in videos of the strike aligns with what would be needed for a nuclear weapon but not a conventional one, Alberque said.
“If Russia is working on a MIRV with a conventional CEP, we’ve never seen it,” he said, referring to circular error probable (CEP), a measure of weapon accuracy. A nuclear missile typically has a CEP of 50 to 200 metres, meaning half of all rounds aimed at the target will land within that distance of the aimpoint.
In videos of the attack, each warhead appeared to drop smaller payloads that could be seen striking the ground. Wright said that if the missile used such submunitions, accuracy was less of a problem because: “it would distribute them over a wide area. It makes it useful for attacking large facilities”.
Lewis cautioned that given the expense, using this type of ballistic missile to hit Ukraine might be more a psychological tactic than a military one. “If were inherently terrifying, (Putin) would just use it. But that’s not quite enough,” Lewis said. “He had to use it and then do a press conference and then do another press conference and say: ‘Hey, this thing is really scary, you should be scared.'”