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Sputnik 2.0? Oreshnik and the Western Military Capabilities Gap

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This post endeavors, at a very high level, to discuss how the US/NATO shortcomings against Russia and the so-called West’s geostrategic competitors, are more foundational than most commentators recognize. This is due at least in part to an onslaught of propaganda maintaining long-standing prejudices against Slavs and non-white countries that industrialized after Europe.1

Even so, the seeming cognitive block to admitting Russia prowess is leading to bizarre and self-defeating responses, such as acting as if Russia will agree to a ceasefire or a pause on Ukraine NATO entry (when any discussion of “NATO entry” is a big red flag to the Russians) to US and NATO doubling down. They are insisting they will continue to violate Russia’s red lines by launching more “deep missile strikes” into Russia even after the successful demonstration of Russia’s formidable Oreshnik missile. France authorized the use of its long-range Scalp missiles against undisputed Russian territory after the Oreshink strike.

We’ll discuss a bit below some of accounts of the Oreshink works and why it is so significant (keep in mind I can’t independently verify either the information or the analyses; hopefully we’ll get more detail soon). The West ought to be reacting to the Oreshnik the same way the US did to the 1957 Sputnik launch: that it demonstrated that the US was seriously behind the USSR in key areas of expertise. There was a panicked acceleration of space-related spending as well as a broader push to increase math and sciences education.

But in fact the US and NATO have gotten many proofs of how their capability level is behind and if anything falling further behind, from Russian success in GPS signal-jamming and blocking Starlink to its air-defense prowess to Russia regularly using hypersonic missiles, while the US has only recently had a successful test.2

Now the US is the clear leader in some important weapons categories, such as submarines. But an even bigger from the perspective of capabilities is that the US and its allies seem to be operating from a dated playbook. And this problem appears to be deep seated. This goes beyond the problem identified by many experts early on, that NATO was optimized only for very local defense and for regional wars against insurgent forces (read mainly men in sandals with AK-47s and shoulder-launched missiles), not a peer power. ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) capabilities are not simply more important than ever but now drive battlefield operations.

Yet many former military officers have pointed out that the US concept of war remains mired in World War II notions like big arrow attacks. For instance, Andrei Martyanov has discussed how Russian weapons are “net centric” as in they communicate with each other. I believe this goes beyond tanks being able to say, “Here I am!” but sending back battlefield information.

I hope knowledgeable readers can opine, but I wonder if the US has also become complacent due to its satellite and in some cases, radar capabilities (the point of sending the THAAD system to Israel was per either Lawrence Wilkerson or Douglas Macgregor not its small stock of missiles but its spectacular radar, which can “see” small objects at extremely long distances). We may be kidding ourselves as to the effectiveness of our current systems versus highly-intensive, multi-perspective surveillance of active battlefields.

Similarly (and I did listen to this clip 2x, so my recounting should be ), after his last visit to Russia, Scott Ritter described a long conversation with a military officer. Ritter’s interlocutor said he bet he knew how Ritter would plan an attack and Ritter obligingly provided the “right” response, as in classic combined arms operation with logistical support, with air strikes first, then air cover for a tank and infantry advance.

The Russia said, “That’s not how we do it.” The first step is to plan the drone map, as in to grid out the area and how to deploy drones to cover the theater of battle. The drones are also the first line of combat: “The drones lead the way.”

Mind you, the Russians can’t regard these as advanced ideas if an officer would casually pass them on to a foreign commentator. Yet Ritter found the information to be novel3

A second issue is that the West has not adapted to the related rise of the importance and power of unmanned weapons, witness the demonstrated impotence against Ansar Allah’s attacks on shipping.

One example is the great summer counteroffensive of 2023. It seemed ludicrous from the outset to think it would get much of anywhere. The West announced its plans well in advance, so Russia has ample time to make its Surovkin line even more robust that it might otherwise have. Russia could see Ukraine forces assembling. Bizarrely, the attack did not include meaningful air cover. Instead, US and NATO planners vested their hopes in idea that Russia troops would run away when they encountered Western weapons.

As readers know, the fight did not get as far as Russia’s first fortified line. Russians mined the tanks and armored vehicle approaches with drones, forcing them (mainly) to follow narrow paths cleared by mine-clearers. Taking out a single vehicle would stop an advance. When the vehicles tried to retreat, they would typically find that Russia had drone-mined their rear. Ukraine adapted by instead moving men in via armored personnel carriers, close to tree lines, and having them advance on foot. That made them vulnerable to drone attacks again, illustrating that Russia had drones in such abundance that it could afford to use them against small groups and even single soldiers.

This encounter should have been seen as a humiliating defeat. Perhaps I missed it, but I have not come across any signs that that has been internalized by NATO or the US, meaning no/not enough of a post mortem much the less recognition of the need for a serious rethink of how the West wages war.

In June 2022, a landmark article published by the Royal United Services Institute, The Return of Industrial Warfare by Alex Vershinin, described how Russia was outproducing the West in artillery and it would take ten years of concerted effort by the West to catch up. Since then, Russia has increased its shell output considerably while Western efforts have floundered.

But even more important than the gap in what the West no doubt likes to see as comparatively crude weaponry is the West’s ever-more dated vision of what war is about. The Oreshnik ought to be a wake-up call but muted reactions suggest otherwise.4 Another sign is a new article in the Financial Times that discusses what Europe would need to do to defend itself without US backing.

What the Oreshnik Signifies

Let’s start in “sentence first, verdict afterward” mode. A reason Western officials are so upset about the Oreshnik is that it shows that Russia (sensibly) restarted work on intermediate range ballistic missiles after Trump exited the INF treaty in 2019, which had disallowed them. One obviously uncomfortable fact is that the fact that this missile is not just “merely hypersonic” but travels at >Mach 10. That means it can hit European targets at double-plus speed and cannot be intercepted.

Russia has been trolling:5

Another important feature is that the missile has MIRV-like capabilities (more expert commentary objects to calling it MIRV) in that the missile can and here did separate into 6 capsules which in turn each delivered 6 warheads, for a total of 36. I have weirdly seen a video that estimates the cost of the Oreshnik at “several million” and depicts that as expensive, when for 36 delivered warheads, even before getting to their impact, seems cheap.

But let’s turn to what seems to be the real showstopper, which is not the impressive flight speed and distance per se but the destructive effect:

As we’ll unpack in a bit, many commentators have seemed to discount the sheer kinetic and heat force of this weapon. We’ll work in a minute from the widely reported fact, supposedly based on estimates using the impact videos, that the missiles hit the ground at hypersonic speed.6 If that is accurate, that represents a vast increase in power.

Consider the old normal. Here is a typical recap; I recall Simplicius saying something very similar in an extensive treatment of hypersonic missiles but search is not being sufficiently helpful in tracking it down:

No missile is hypersonic in the terminal phase. The heat generated by lower atmospheric pressure would destroy it before it reached its target. The key to the success of hypersonic speed in the upper atmosphere is the plasma bubble that generates, which makes the missile invisible to radar. By the time it’s on its reentry track and has slowed down (still travelling fast) it’s too late to effectively target.

Now how could Russia have achieved what was heretofore deemed impossible? If the missiles indeed struck the ground at hypersonic speed, it’s due to new alloys to withstand the incredible re-entry heat.

Some have argued that the lack of apparent secondary explosions shows the Oreshnik was not impressive. That’s a misreading because the missiles drove deep into the ground and the great energy was dispersed and did its main damage there. Even so, this longer video shows some secondary blasts:

Even though Black Mountain Analysis concedes that claims about the actual destruction of the Yuzhmash plant vary, the lack of explosions at impact actually confirm the kinetic force of the weapons. From Black Mountain Analysis:

The impact on the target in this missile attack is astonishing. What is also interesting is that there are no visual signs of explosions typical for surface or near-surface detonations. This means the warheads likely penetrated deep into the ground with incredible momentum and hit the underground locations (workshops) with a force as powerful as if they had “detonated.” The kinetic shock wave will likely be enhanced by the instantaneous expansion of the soil moisture when exposed to the high temperatures caused by the warhead and the friction of intrusion into the ground at such depths…..

The missile is unknown, but the effect of its payload is a fascinating subject to cover. The “Oreshnik” missile system has extraordinary characteristics regarding the kinetic hit-to-kill mode. Warheads consist of special metals, and motors can achieve 10-11 Mach for these blocks, turning them into kinetic killers. The logic is simple – the higher the speed, the more energy is delivered. Therefore, this terminal block requires no explosive material but heavy, hard, and high-melting-point metal. At such high speeds, penetration into the target causes massive destruction on impact through the shockwaves, creating a mini-high concentrated localized earthquake. It does not need to hit the target precisely (just in the vicinity), and the sheer energy and momentum transfer will produce such shockwaves that will break the concrete structures deep underground. To do this, a camouflet explosion is developed. A camouflet explosion is an explosion at a relatively great depth, where no visible changes on the ground surface are formed.

The destruction of underground objects occurs when the object is within the fracture zone.

From https://impact.uwo.ca/impact-craters/products-of-impact-crater/ 

The video below also endorses the notion that the impact speed is ~Mach 10 and provides some views early on of its small launch vehicle:

And Black Mountain Analysis explained long-form that the targeted Yuzhmash facility included significant and very well bunkered underground production areas and Ukraine was planning to use them for among other things, intercontinental ballistic missiles. He added:

According to some analysts, the plant and its design bureau are among the most extensive underground military bases, serving as a model for North Korean underground complexes

Even though the French statement authorizing the use of its Scalp missiles means that the significance of Oreshnik has not yet penetrated some of the thicker skulls in the Collective West, perhaps they are telling themselves that Russia does not have others in reserve yet. That is a dangerous bet. However, in a discussion with Daniel Davis, John Mearsheimer pointed out that Russia is winning in Ukraine and just needs to stay the course. Responding to Western provocations will distract from Russia’s larger objectives.

John Helmer confirmed this reading:

“Just as important,” the [Russian] source says, “the Russian ground offensive in the east will remain slow, patient, maybe for two years more. The priority is on preventing Russian casualties, conserving Russian lives. This is essential once you realize that the [Putin] presidential succession also depends, not only on winning the war on Russian terms, but ensuring the protection of Russian lives.”

And the reason for the Scalp missile barking may be that the Yuzhmash strike directly undercut more ATACMS and Storm Shadow missile salvos. Again from Helmer:

Although satellite images of the plant after Thursday’s attack have not been declassified or published in the open, what is likely is that the bunker stocks of ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles being prepared at the plant for launching against Russia were destroyed, along with the factory-floor and machine capacities of the plant to service HIMARS, other rocket and missile firing equipment delivered by the US and NATO states to the Zelensky regime.

Mearsheimer pointed out that if the West again hit pre-2014 Russia, Putin’s druthers would be to mess with the US and its allies out of theater, such as by better arming Ansar Allah. Keep in mind that Western officials (even recently Jake Sullivan) have pointed out that ATACMS (and by extension Storm Shadow and Scalp) strikes will not change the outcome of the conflict. However, Mearsheimer pointed out that if politically-meaningful damage were done, Putin may have to respond to domestic pressure to make a visible and painful counterattack.

The West Does Not Appear to be Adapting to New Realities

Due to this post already being a bit long, we’ll give only cursory treatment to our second topic, that of the Collective West being wedded to an outdated mental model of how to wage war, and that in turn leading to misguided priorities. We will use a new story in the Financial Times, Can Europe defend itself with less American help?, as an object lesson.

We’ll put aside the considerable internal decision-making and coordination issues that NATO faces in the absence of US knocking heads together leadership. Auerlien has described them in gory detail over many posts, with NATO’s Phantom Armies as good one-stop shopping.

One can argue that the Financial Times would not represent the most advanced thinking in NATO, Perhaps that is true. But the Financial Times is fairly well plugged into political orthodoxy and what I call “leading edge conventional wisdom”. So it would seem reasonable to take its account of big priorities and impediments at face value.

One glaring issue is the way, as in the US, procuring and contracting drive the bus. This is an issue that Brian Berletic has repeatedly mentioned that is an impediment to Collective West military effectiveness, that our weapons-making is profit rather than purpose driven. In the EU, there’s an additional level of complexity, as in wrangling over who produces what. We have pointed out that NATO, as an actually administratively very weak and lose alliance, has mainly had inefficient national produced weapons, such as the afore-mentioned UK Storm Shadow versus French Scalp versus German Taurus missiles, and several national flavors of tanks and armored personnel carries, and even reports that 155mm shells are not as well standardized as they ought to be. The article confirms that by citing a McKinsey finding, that the US has 32 types of weapons systems versus 172 for Europe.

But what is striking about the piece is that it emphasizes what one might consider to be conventional warfare and with that, current major weapons categories. Not that that won’t remain important going forward. But there is a bizarre failure to recognize that some currently perceived-to-be-important weapons types are being made less potent or even irrelevant. Larry Johnson has argued that manned aircraft are going the way of the cavalry.

In light of the short discussion at the top of the paramount role of ISR and the increasingly powerful role of drones, this section reads as if Europe aspires to fight yesterday’s war:

And all that is in addition to what Europe would need to do should America withdraw from Nato. In that scenario, the things at the top of any hypothetical “to-do” list are what Edward Stringer, a former British RAF air marshal, calls the “boring stuff”.

“It’s ‘boring war’ — stuff like ammunition stockpiles, transport and logistics — that really matters,” says Stringer, who has written about a possible post-US Nato. “It’s also what almost nobody does properly at scale, except for the US.”

But some of what the US provides to Nato — such as its fleet of C17 cargo planes, which cost $340mn apiece and can carry 75 tonnes of equipment almost 4,500km without refuelling — is all but irreplaceable. US-made F-35s also increasingly sit at the heart of Nato’s combat air power, with more than 500 of the fighter jets expected to operate in Europe by the mid-2030s, IISS estimates.

The visuals confirm a love of older tech in the form of fighter jets. Note these are the only graphics in the piece:

Contrast this with increasing evidence of these jets being rendered less potent by Russian air defenses. From Simplicius:

Western pundits rejoice that the strike [into Kursk by Storm Shadows] “proves” how F-16s or other platform are able to hit Russia with Western missiles. The problem is, this strike proves—thus far at least—they’re too scared to launch them deep. The fact they targeted something right near the LOC indicates that the Su-24s, Mig-29s, or other carrying platforms (F-16s almost certainly not risked from their far-west Ukraine refuge) were terrified of coming anywhere close to the Russian border, as they would be shot down by S-400 or related systems.

You see, Ukraine’s export variant Storm Shadows are said to go 300km max, which means just to reach the compound in Kursk, the planes likely released the missiles at maximum distance all the way over the Dnieper river, safely out of Russian AD range

Ironically, the reason the command center in Kursk was vulnerable was that Russia was loath to put its S-400 launchers too close to Ukraine, so Western planners do look to have correctly identified an area of coverage weakness.

But the bigger point is this article no where mentions drones (which could allow Europe to leapfrog some of its older and overlapping weapons systems) and barely alludes to air defense, per a passing mention of Patriots:

That includes Germany’s Rheinmetall, Nordic multinational Nammo and MBDA, a European multinational that produces missiles, including Storm Shadows, and which started a $5.5bn joint venture this year with the US’s Raytheon to produce Patriot air defence missiles in Germany.

Patriot systems are widely considered to be inferior to the Russian S-400. Russia is already on to S-500 andS-550 systems. Perhaps I missed it, but I have not read that the Patriot has been upgraded.

Apologies for limiting ourselves to this new Financial Times story as a case study. However, it does strongly suggest, even if it cannot amount to definitive proof, that the Western understanding of its military capabilities is sorely dated.

______

1 One staple is that even articles that concede that Russia is winning in Ukraine still include ritual denigration of the Russian military. A recent example depicting Russia as primitive, even barbaric. From the BBC in Ukraine front could ‘collapse’ as Russia gains accelerate, experts warn:

The losses are compounded by the “meat grinder” approach said to be favoured by Russian commanders – describing the waves of recruits thrown towards Ukrainian positions in a bid to exhaust troops.

2 A related issue is Russia’s success in achieving close coordination of its battlefield forces and its arms manufacture. Russia has been feeding information from combat failures and successes back to weapons makers and has been making adaptations in time frames that are simply impossible in the US contracting process.

3 Ritter’s surprise is credible to me based on many years of competitor interviews. I was the only person at McKinsey to have the nerve to call direct competitors of my client Citibank and then get them to talk to me (not hiding that I was from McKinsey, engaged by a client in their space) and then more competitor interviews in my later life. The usual way to get them to agree was to remind them that they were in charge, they could terminate the talk at any time, and that I was seeking general market information. Inevitably, I would learn at least one item per interview of what the subject really did think was general market information that was new and useful to Citibank.

4 One example is a new, prominent story at the Wall Street Journal: Ukraine Clings to Shrinking Sliver of Russia, Expecting Trump to Push for Peace Talks. It mentions the Storm Shadow strike into Kursk and depicts it as killing a North Korean general (dubious) and providing a morale boost. Admittedly this article presents itself as having a tight focus, but works in unverified British claims like Russia having suffered 700,000 casualties, without mentioninng the Oreshnik strike.

5 Last night, this little RT video came up many times on a Twitter search on “Oreshnik” without even wanting to see it. It seems to have been significantly scrubbed; it took a lot of effort today to find the clip, although stills from it were more abundant.

6 This section admittedly relies heavily on Black Mountain Analysis, but I have seen other accounts make claims similar to his, so for convenience I will again cite this source:

Looking at the time lapse between the light flash and the reentry vehicle (or the warhead) disappear, and combined with the estimated height of the clouds of cc 600 m as per Ukrainian weather report at 02:00 AM. The warhead hit the ground about 0.15 seconds from the break from the clouds. The calculated speed is about 4 km/s or Mach 11.8. Anyone can play with the time by adding or reducing milliseconds but the calculated speed will be in the range of Mach 10+.

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230 comments

  1. AG

    – I have been drafting this just this moment. I rather post than not at all. Must do stuff. Many thanks for the outstanding work above with this speed. Will try to get people read it. –

    re: Martyanov and Oreshnik as game changer:

    As I am trying to gather the reasons why Oreshnik is a game changer the way Zircon/Kinzhals are not (hypersonic attributes would come with all of the models) – Martyanov in his latest video has a helpful example and that is destruction of army units assembling before attacks.

    i.e. that Oreshnik basically replaces tactical nukes.

    12.000 men e.g. could be wiped out in this particular example judging from the area destroyed in Dnepro.

    Of course it would be “interesting” to know how much area 36 munition items (with 6 warheads and 6 sub-munitions) could cover at maximum in such a fashion on the surface.

    TC 17:00-21:00
    https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/11/there-is-issue-with-physics.html

    Before that he briefly shows Bremerhaven as a landing spot of eminent importance to US logistics that too would be wiped out without nukes.

    This is the true nature of the game changing term. And I assume it is only the beginning as yield and power/might are concerned.

    Eventually, do nukes with all their harmful side effects become obsolete?
    Those aspects that forbid their use?

    “Clean”, “surgical” nukes with minium fallout and civilian casualties was one intention behind US nuclear first strike/counterstrike strategies as first publicly laid out by Lieber & Press in 2006 and made widely known through informing the public about the super-fuze.

    a.k.a. “US nuclear primacy and the end of MAD”. A short lived assumption apparently. Wonder if Stratcom will understand.

    Which would have made nuclear war admissible.

    However – and forgive me for over-stretching here – if a final stage of a new “clean” weapons system would replace nukes even on a strategic level that would have implications, not only good ones.

    Because what made one uneasy already with Tridents that could be super-accurate and therefore be “not a problem” would apply here too.

    It would make the use of non-nuclear super-bombs an easy moral decision.

    We are approaching the scenarios known from Sic-Fi movies (“THE CREATOR” e.g.) and computer strategy games of the 1990s, like the “Command & Conquer” series where a Western US-led NATO clone had a super-weapon that could pulverize anything with laser-accuracy on a large scale. With a weapon safely stationed in space – god-like powers.

    What if the US will acquire this not in 20-30 years time? But much earlier.

    1. VTDigger

      Russia has always had overwhelming conventional superiority over the West, that’s why NATO has a fetish for nuclear brinksmanship. It’s the only card in the deck in case of a ground war with RU.

      RU planes, tanks, AA, missile tech, small arms all historically superior to western equivalents AND they have quantity advantage too.

    2. Balan Aroxdale

      I think people are reading too much into the payload of these missiles. I’m not an expert but I’m skeptical the speed alone accounts for their destructiveness. Evasiveness/effectiveness yes, strike power no. If 36 missiles hit a medium size industrial complex a city, we can expect it to be destroyed without postulating much beyond what we’ve seen in Gaza this past year.

      I don’t think we’re looking at a MOAB type conventional munition here, and not one capable of taking out divisions in a single strike. If you want to do that, just launch 100,000 drones.

      1. Yves Smith Post author

        Please bone up on physics. Kinetic force is the square of velocity.

        So this hypersonic missile, at impact, is at a bare minimum 2x as fast as previous hypersonics. Mach 5 is the threshold between super and hypersonic. Previous hypersonics were below hypersonic speed at impact. This one is estimated at Mach 11-12.

        >2x the velocity = >4x the kinetic force.

        That’s before getting to the effect of the super high heat transmission.

        I suggest you read the entire linked Black Mountain Analysis which explains in more detail what happens with this sort of impact.

        1. Polar Socialist

          According to a RAND paper each projectile had kinetic energy of about 800 kg of TNT on impact. AFAIK, multiple smaller impacts in close proximity of each other is often more destructive than one big boom – colliding compression waves, push-pull effect and all kinds of other forces.

          1. 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.

        2. Raymond Sim

          Not to be a pedant, except that I am one, kinetic energy is half the mass times the square of the velocity.

          The force imparted by an impact is typically a very complex thing to calculate, because projectile and target will have internal dynamics. However we can still assert that “Instantaneous force is the rate of change of momentum.” with momentum being mass times velocity, and nobody but a truly execrable pedant would contradict us.

          1. Yves Smith Post author

            Sorry, I was trying to be writerly and English prizes not using the same word or expression repeatedly. But that’s the wrong approach on technical topics.

        3. Wisker

          Energy of the attack is by no means the whole story. Much of that energy (via shrapnel) is directed outward / laterally when an explosive charge is used.

          If these were high ballistic coefficient kinetic penetrators as people speculate, most of their energy is directed straight down into the ground. Good versus hard enclosed spaces: concrete buildings, underground facilities and the like, not good for spreading damage laterally… beyond whatever crater they manage to create.

          It’s like the difference between a tank sabot round and an HE round–you would not bother using the former against infantry or any other soft target. That being said, I imagine the Russians could come up with a variant that peppered the area with smaller darts or the like, although at much slower final velocity to keep them from melting.

          (I think heat shields, not magical metal alloys are operative here. 2km/s or Mach 5 is about the upper limit of what highly aerodynamic metal darts will survive without a heat shield).

          1. Yves Smith Post author

            Please read discussion and see the diagrams at Black Mountain Analysis, linked in the post above. Experts who have looked at this in detail disagree. The diagrams show forces dispersing both outward and down.

            You are also missing the impact of the extreme heat.

            A colleague of Larry Johnson confirmed what the source in the tweet said: an entire enormous factory complex was reduced to dust. Not rubble, dust. That confirms the enormous amount of energy and the effectiveness of the shocks

      2. 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

        2. Carry

          At 3000 meters per second the energy will be v*v*m /2, which is 3000*3000*1/2 = 4500000 J = 4,5 MJ per kilogram of mass. which is about equal to the energy of explosives per kilogram of mass.

    3. Gregorio

      If the U.S. had the technology for such a space based super weapon, why would they be wasting more than a trillion dollars to “modernize” their nuclear weapons?

      1. cfraenkel

        Duh. Because there is a whole MIC base that depends on those profits. As mentioned in the post:

        that our weapons-making is profit rather than purpose driven.

        You’ve pointed out a prime example. Now, on the other hand, to work towards an equivalent system would still require new missiles, at the very least; the minutemen are approaching Social Security eligibility.

  2. PlutoniumKun

    The best analysis I’ve seen is from Millennium7*, which is hosted by a former military aerospace engineer. Unlike most of the people who’ve been posting on this, he knows how to do the calculations. I’d recommend watching his video.

    He doesn’t believe it’s a new weapon – it’s most likely a land based version of the R-30 (RSM-56), the main submarine launched ballistic missile used by Russia. The flight characteristics match what you’d expect from it (i.e. a fairly flat trajectory), and the size of the payload matches one thats been adopted for short range and a high load – probably around 3-4 metric tonnes. It’s most likely the MIRVs are adopted standard ones – these are very expensive and high tech, but a mature technology, they’ve been around since the 1960’s. There is no need for wild speculations about super duper hypersonics, these have been around for a long time, but generally used only for nukes, for a variety of reasons, not least cost.

    The damage is likely substantial – as the video points out, it’s quite easy to work out the potential energy release of the strikes, on the assumption that they came in at Mach 8-10. It’s about 2-3 times that of the W-88, the standard 2,000lb of the USAF – roughly similar to the biggest conventional thermobaric weapons used by the Russians. The damage to such a huge and heavily reinforced structure like the target will depend largely on accuracy. The MIRVs are likely to have CEP’s of around 100 metres. To be more accurate (if needed), they would probably need a slower entry so some kind of terminal target acquisition is possible – this isn’t possible with a heat shielded hypersonic, at least not as far as we know.

    1. voislav

      I’ve seen Ukrainian reports that they’ve recovered parts from both Yars/Topol and Bulava (R-30) missile families. So it’s likely that the missile is a distinct weapon, but assembled using existing technologies and parts from both of these missile families. Given that US exited the INF treaty in 2019, it’s reasonable that Russians could develop such a weapon in 5 years.

      It’s also worth noting that Budanov/GUR is claiming that this missile is from Kedr missile family, which is being developed as a lighter and more mobile replacement for Yars/Topol family.

    2. Yves Smith Post author

      Please note that this post did not make any claims regarding HOW the Oreshink operates. I find that much less important, as I indicated in the post, than the proof of the pudding, which is the hypersonic speed at impact and what that means in terms of the potency of the weapon, as in the damage done by raw kinetic force and additional effect of the super high heat.

      The hypersonic speed through the terminal phase also renders it credibly non-interceptible, while before Ukraine could claim it got super lucky and intercepted earlier Russian hypersonic missiles.

      The second additional key design feature is the combination of the MIRV-like behavior. That means Russia can send a big payload of warheads and be sure they will get through.

      Note that with other weapons that target infrastructure, you do not want an exact hit. For reasons over my pay grade, you do more damage by hitting very close by rather than exactly.

      1. Balan Aroxdale

        I was skeptical so I ran some numbers. I am not an explosives or missiles expert of any kind.

        One ton TNT equivalent is 4.1 Gigajoules of energy = 4.1 x 10^9 J
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent

        Mach 10 is about 3km/s or 3000 m/s.
        Say the missile is one tonne = 1000kg (we can scale this up later).
        Kinetic energy of a mass M is

        KE = 1/2 M V^2 = 1/2 (1000) * (3000)^2 = 4.5 x 10^9 J

        This is linear is mass, so double the mass, double the energy etc. So, to my surprise, an object impacting at Mach 10 has — roughly speaking — about as much kinetic energy as an equivalent mass of TNT. I’ll say that again since it’s such an even-ish number.

        An object at Mach 10 has as much kinetic energy as the equivalent explosive mass of TNT.

        So whatever these hyper-sonic missiles (including the whole frame, engine, leftover fuel, etc) weigh, that’s the equivalent mass of TNT they amount to on impact. I don’t know what the usual TNT equivalent of various kinds of missiles are (e.g. the 2000lb bombs (of TNT?) being dropped on Gaza). I’m guessing the separate missiles might weigh 1-2 tons? I really have no idea. But the calculation is interesting enough as a rule of thumb. Make of this what you will.

        1. PlutoniumKun

          There are calculations in the link I posted. The energy from a missile at that speed is several times the equivalent weight in TNT. He calculated that each of the sub bomblets have the energy equivalent of 2 or 3 W-88 bombs, which are 2,000 lbs (not all of this explosive)

        2. Ignacio

          Yet those equivalencies do not hold equal on potential effects because the way kinetic energy is released on the target (and thermal energy too) will, i guess, be somehow different from that of an explosive. I like the comparison with a small earthquake and the comparison with the effects of meteorites as best ways to explain the weapon. Terrifying.

          1. John k

            I’m certainly no expert, but a bomb going off on the surface would seem to release at most half it’s force downward while a penetrating projectile would release all, or at least most, energy into the ground as it passes through. Then the explosive bit, whose mass had already participated in the kinetic fraction, would release all its force deep underground, particularly effective vs deep bunkers.
            Perhaps that thought affected Z.

      2. PlutoniumKun

        All long range missiles of this type are hypersonic as they enter the atmosphere, its simple physics for a ballistic missile. The V2 was (briefly) hypersonic, and all ICBM’s are hypersonic. This term is badly overused. There are many different types of hypersonic missile – the ‘real’ ones (as in, the ones that are currently being developed) are generally air breathing and are manoeverable throughout the flight stage – this is much harder to achieve, and this missile does not attempt it -it seems to have followed a flat, but still ballistic trajectory for most of its flight. The flattened trajectory is typical of SLBM’s, as they are generally intended to be launched closer to the target. This makes them harder, but not impossible to intercept. There is video available of the missile after launch, and it has a noticeably very flat trajectory, but is clearly a conventional rocket, not some kind of new launch vehicle.

        the link I posted (and he is a very respected commentator on military aviation) has done the rough calculations. This missile could potentially be intercepted by an SM-3, but only if there was a very quick response. The incoming projectiles are not all that much harder to intercept than existing ballistic missiles, it’s the sheer number in each one that will make them a potential game changer.

        But being hypersonic is not the be-all and end-all. A point defence is perfectly capable of hitting a hypersonic as it is a head on-interception. the disadvantage of hypersonics is that it is almost impossible to achieve the sort of accuracy of a conventional warhead – the heat shield required makes terminal guidance very difficult, if not impossible. There is a pretty good reason why nobody has bothered up to now in using large ICBM’s for conventional use, well, apart from the North Koreans. They are a very expensive way to almost hit a target. But the Russians seem to have made some very significant advances in accuracy. This missile will still be very expensive, you cannot avoid that with MIRVS, but still cheaper than an airfield.

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          I do not know why you keep straw manning me by arguing against claims I NEVER NEVER made.

          My point is the hypersonic speed on impact, what that took in terms of design improvements, and what that means in term of weapon effectiveness. None of your comment above relates to that.

          As to the inability/difficulty of intercepting it, Ted Postol disagrees. He has the chops to make that determination: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/international/u-s-missile-tech-expert-says-no-one-can-counter-oreshnik-ukraine-seeks-protection/videoshow/115667179.cms

          I do not know about the Oreshnick, but other Russian hypersonics have the capacity of changing their flight path. If that can be done at at all at this ferocious, sustained speed, it would be hard to fathom how a much slower weapon could intercept it. Most experts scoffed at Ukraine’s claims that it had intercepted some of Russia’s older hypersonic missiles.

          1. PlutoniumKun

            Sorry, I don’t mean to straw man. There are numerous people out there commenting on hypersonics without really understanding what we do (and don’t) know about them. I’m trying to add some clarification. I would encourage anyone to watch in detail Millennium*7 videos on this, he does a number of deep dives to clarify exactly what and what they cannot do and what we know about the various systems in place.

            I just think using the term ‘hypersonic’ itself has become misleading. There are a very wide variety of systems out there – all have various advantages and disadvantages. Few are genuine ‘breakthroughs’ technically. What is changing is the tactical environment in which they are being used.

            1. juno mas

              Yes, the Millennium link provided is informative. The expert commentator makes clear that the hyper-sonic speed of the ‘hardened’ projectiles (36) will have a greater destructive force than any other conventional ‘bomb’ extant (in use). He clearly is impressed with the accuracy of the projectiles and gives the real impression that this missile/warhead delivery system should be a wake-up call to everyone on the planet— a nuclear mistake is in the offing.

            2. Yves Smith Post author

              I’m sorry for sounding testy. I’m a bit bothered by the general tendency among analysts, which you are reflecting, to focus on the probable operation of the system, when its geopolitical effect lies in its potency.

              Now having said that, the operation/design will give important clues as to its costs and the speed with which Russia could ramp up production. But I have not yet seen these experts in their initial takes using their takes on the design to probe these issues.

        2. Raymond Sim

          My understanding:

          The projectiles can be placed on trajectories which converge on the target (Orbital mechanics is fun!) making interception more problematic.

          If the trajectories are lofted then the angle of descent can be very steep, reducing the period of thermal stress and increasing the kinetic energy of the impact.

        3. ISL

          Given the short time of the video and that maneuvering takes time to displace, if it had maneuvered, would we even have seen it? The best one can state is that the jury is out. If there had been no cloud cover, then one “might” be able to derive conclusions if there was any AAD and the missile tried to evade. Given the state of air defense in Ukraine, except for Kiev, why bother inputting maneuvering?

          Postol argues that maneuvering high up to keep each cluster focused — otherwise, the spread of each set of 6 would have been larger. I will note, that the US MIC has many irons in this fire, and rattling those irons could lose one a lot of friends (with consulting contracts) quick.

          Professor Postol has long been rattling those irons (Patriot success in Gulf War 1 being fake), so those bridges to the MIC are burnt for him long ago.

      3. no one

        How soon, where in Crimea exactly, and what flag will you be waving? Now that I think of it, wasn’t there supposed to be NAFO party in Crimea last year? I remember seing posters.

      4. GDmofo

        Yves quote:
        Note that with other weapons that target infrastructure, you do not want an exact hit. For reasons over my pay grade, you do more damage by hitting very close by rather than exactly.

        From Blackmountain:
        “The kinetic shock wave will likely be enhanced by the instantaneous expansion of the soil moisture when exposed to the high temperatures caused by the warhead and the friction of intrusion into the ground at such depths.”

        When I read this, imagined something like a localized earthquake. If you know how modern torpedoes work (by exploding underneath a ship, creating an air bubble, collapsing the ship on itself), can you create something similar with “liquifying” the ground underneath a foundation with a kinetic hypersonic?

        And a thought:
        From https://earthquake.usgs.gov/education/shakingsimulations/1906/

        “To better understand the distribution of shaking and damage that accompanied the great 1906 earthquake, seismologists have constructed new computer models to recreate the ground motions. The simulations show how ground moved on the two sides of the San Andreas fault and how seismic waves radiated away from the fault to produce the shaking. ”

        If that happens on a macro level, can it happen on a micro level? Can you have your detonations around the edge, focusing a seismic wave towards the middle?

        And one last though: would a kinetic energy weapon like this make a runway completely unusable? If so, destroying one of Ukraine’s airbases would send a nice signal to the west.

    4. Polar Socialist

      In the videos we’ve seen the warheads strike pretty much vertically. Likely to spend as little time in the atmosphere as possible, after having been aimed to the target above the stratosphere. Thus they won’t need as much heat shielding are should be or accurate. We’re basically looking at a functional version of the telephone poles from the space weapon.

      Since Russia has a big family of TELAR launched ISBM missile versions from Temp 2S to Topol to Yars, which they have at two separate occasion turned into IRBM by removing a stage and adding more payload, I don’t really see why they now would start working based on a completely different design meant for submarines. If they can turn a Topol-M to effective IRMB, they have ~70 missiles ready to be converted.

      The video purported to be of the missiles launch is very likely of a Progress MS-29 delivering cargo to ISS. At least the text in the video claims it to be filmed in a city in Kazahkstan, 100 km west of Baikonur and over 1000 km east of Kapustin Yar.

      1. Yves Smith Post author

        Simplicius’ long writeup on earlier Russian hypersonics, the ones that were slowed by air friction to below hypersonic speed in their terminal phase also depicted the descent path as close to vertical. They were unable to maintain hypersonic speed due to the need for better heat shielding. From what I have read, you are not on track in minimizing this issue.

        The embedded video suggested this missile was a cousin of ground launched missiles and had videos of them. I know this sound silly, but the one they showed looked cute, as in it would make for a nice kiddie toy if scaled down. But then again, I find the low profile Russian tanks to be cute too.

        1. Polar Socialist

          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.

      2. PlutoniumKun

        Yes, the alignment of the strikes is the fascinating thing and the similarity to hazel flowers seems to have provided the name. Oddly poetic for such a deadly weapon.

        They have options of course, but so far as I know only the Yars is still in production and they may not have more capacity to build them. The R-30 is also significantly more compact (important for increasing the number of roads capable of taking them) and robust and may, if its similar to US SLRBM’s be capable of a flatter (and hotter) trajectory than long range ones. All speculation of course. It could conceivably have come about from a program to give older boomers a conventional strike role (the US has done this, but using cruise missiles)

        There may be video distortion, but the trajectory seems to me to be at far too steep an angle for a Progress launch, but I don’t really know. The last Progress launch was in August.

        1. Polar Socialist

          Last Progress launch was actually 21st November 2024, 17:22 local time at Baikonur. It delivered 2,487 kg of cargo and supplies to the ISS on 23rd November.

  3. john

    “I was the only person at McKinsey to have the nerve to call direct competitors of my client …” Phillip Fisher called this “scuttlebutt”. Good job.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      No, this was NOT “scuttlebutt.” These were formal meetings with executives in the same line of business in their offices who knew I was from McKinsey, engaged by a direct, albeit unnamed, competitor. They understood this was all on the record, as opposed to, say daisy chaining through contacts, setting up a meeting over drinks and pretending I was merely looking for general background.

      1. john

        You should just take the compliment and move on. It certainly is scuttlebutt, as a cursory or deep review will show. As I said, nice job.

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          You may have intended a compliment but the word “scuttlebutt” is derogatory, hence my reaction.

          In reality the interviewee comments about what they perceived as normal and typical in the industry were revelations of their own practices that they believed were pretty common.

          In person interviews are a very expensive way to get information, and Citibank would quickly have nixed them if all they were getting was “scuttlebutt”.

  4. AG

    edit: “What if the US will acquire this not in 20-30 years time? But much earlier.”
    Of course referring to RU-style hypersonics. Not computer game sci-fi technology

    1. jsn

      The Friedmanites started by attacking the public education system in parallel to the launch of The Powell Memo back in my childhood.

      The dependence of US weapons quality on procurement methodology is just the last link in a long and serially broken causal chain.

      Primary physics research, because its interesting rather than profitable, requires math and science education because its interesting rather than profitable which implies rebuilding US science and math education from the ground up. This is a generational problem it seems to me.

      1. Raymond Sim

        I’m 66. The process has been visible to me since I was in junior high school, hence probably ongoing longer. I’m inclined to think it would take more like a hundred years to undo, assuming we had that kind of time.

        1. jsn

          I was very lucky to be born in Austin which at the time was a sort of retirement community for the New Deal and Great Society with a great faculty roster at the LBJ School and the Law School.

          Austin had a genuinely great Public School system into the early 80’s when Reaganite rot metabolized the hippies, the atheists, the environmentalists and erstwhile progressives all at once into the current Glibertarian Utopia it’s become.

          A sort of perverse payoff for the “Balcones Research Center” initiated under the New Deal and tended through the Great Society that brought the worst of Silicon Valley to Central Texas, fusing the eugenicist enthusiasms of high tech with a well grounded Texas Oligarchy the state would soon export to the nation.

      2. Rory

        I went to high school 1960 – 1964 and even though I did not follow it vocationally, I benefited greatly from the post-Sputnik emphasis on math and science in U.S. secondary education. I think some observers have credited in in large part for my generation’s important participation in the micro computer revolution.

        It would be great if the U.S. could again be scared of Russian prowess and restore emphasis in math and science in education.

        1. Norge

          I owe my 58 year marriage to Sputnik. In response the National Science Foundation (NSF) established summer school science programs for high school seniors and grads to give them a head start in college. My future wife and I met in 1960 at the NSF program at Cornell.

      3. Anonted

        There are plenty of good schools in the US. You just have to pay for them. That problem is deeper than generational, it is civilizational. Most of us aren’t ready for that conversation though. Need to send more kids to die first. Maybe nuke a metro area.

  5. JohnA

    It seems to me that it shows Russia has no need to escalate to nuclear except in ultimate retaliation. If Nato wants to continue the fight “for as long as it takes”, they are more likely to go nuclear, particularly as many US commanders appear to think such a war would be confined to Eurasia, and going all in on targets in Russia will decapitate the country that will then collapse. A fatal misunderstanding, along with unverified claims that Russia uses meatgrinder tactics, has lost hundreds of thousands of men, and needs Korean and now other non-Russian troop reinforcements.

    1. Anonted

      Talk of Russian ‘meat-grinder’ tactics sounds like projection. Perhaps this was characteristic at Bakhmut, where I suspect Wagner was being laid to rest, but this isn’t the Red Army, and Putin appears to have learned the right lessons from Stalin. Strategic sacrifices and tactical losses, yes, but desperate throws of manpower seem yet to emerge from their toolbox.

      That said, what do I know, really? Only that my side has a formal policy of promoting (and enforcing) delusion; unsettling how the government moves in lockstep with the Zeitgeist (or is it vice versa?), the latter openly operating on a philosophy of sociopolitical, economic narcissism… so ultimately I judge Russia, not by what it says, but by some combination of what it does, and an inversion of the English headlines. It’s not a science. It is, however, a tragedy in motion.

      1. Yves Smith Post author

        To add, one reason Prigozhin was increasingly in disfavor was his meat grinder tactics with the prisoners he’d signed up. The MoD was very upset when they realized what he was up to, as were quite a few Russian leaders. That helped strengthen the MoD’s hand in their turf war with Prigozhin.

  6. The Rev Kev

    The west does not want to learn the military lessons of the Ukrainian war which you would think are vital to learn. I have read of a few changes here and a few changes there but nothing substantial. I’m going to call it and say that the reason that this is so is because we are too financially committed to the present weapons systems. No way will the F-35 contracts be allowed to be cancelled. Same with those new Ford-class super carriers. There is too far too much money involved. Too many people in the military and in the MIC that utterly depend on nothing changing. It does not matter if those weapons systems even work so long as people are making money. And if things go t*** up, then the US can fall back on the threat of all the nukes that they have. One day, US troops will go into battle against either a peer enemy or a second tier military and will experience an out and out defeat not seen since the Korean war. So maybe the Pentagon will fight against any deployment to a place where this could happen.

      1. Norbert

        “Sunk cost fallacy” might be a great rebranding for the US surface fleet following the quip that there are two kinds of navy ships, submarines and destroyed ones.

        2. Thistlebreath

          Your comment reminds me of a wry answer to my question asked of my now-deceased neighbor, who was a WWII Pacific navy fleet veteran. He was an officer on an LST. I asked him what the acronym meant. “Large Slow Target.” He and his ship survived the battle of Leyte Gulf. Typhoon and all.

      2. Chris Cosmos

        Because those sunk costs have created not just weapons but sinecures that have mature into duchies and fiefdoms. The corruption is so deep and wide that it cannot be eliminated at this time no matter what Trump claims. It will take, at minimum, a decade before the Pentagon can field a credible threat to Russia/China and maybe even Iran. l

        1. jsn

          And with Musk now furiously pulling the ladder up behind him at DOGE, Trumps’ attempt to tank the Blob will likely tank the economy instead!

          With that as an added headwind, ten years is really optimistic.

          If we were starting now, maybe, but it’ll be another 4 years before any real change becomes possible, unless of course some sort of major disintegration intervenes.

        2. Es s Ce Tera

          Given Trump appears to be staffing up to artificially induce Armageddon, amount of time is irrelevant and probably not a consideration. Complete destruction of the world is a Trump win. The question is whether the US military will follow orders.

          1. Paul Greenwood

            From my knowledge of Nixon White House through insiders DoD under Mel Laird had often a different agenda from the Oval Office and as Truman remarked with regard to Eisenhower it might be hard for him to comprehend that his span of control did not reach very deep into the system – although I suspect Ike knew how coordinating armies of different nations did not ensure a chain of command leading to outputs

        3. John k

          Imo neoliberalism must die, after which the Ed system /health care/ mic corruption/ mfg sector might conceivably be fixed and oligarchs sufficiently taxed/jailed. How many empires have successfully re-booted after a 50-year accelerating decline?
          Somebody above said 100 years, I agree maybe in theory. But consider 100 years ago our resources were just beginning to be tapped. Our adversaries have vastly more fossil and other mineral resources plus are far ahead with their green replacements.
          Plus, the west needs the west more than vice versa. What do we really have to offer the rest besides chaos?

        4. Paul Greenwood

          Why is it so critical for US to field a credible threat to…….? A nation that has never developed a credible threat to a Sony Trinitron or a Mercedes or even a high speed rail system ?

          US Debt is only $36 trillion no doubt covered by expropriating private sector assets but when Trunpnadfs another $10 trillion as he will and import prices surge through tariffs no doubt high interest rates will give you a strong dollar and no exports

          Unless Pentagon budget is halved US will go bust or simply raise taxes with a 49% Federal Sales Tax which is the other face of the Tariff

          Russia can build weapons because Arms production is State controlled and far cheaper than in US and places that privatised like U.K. getting rid of Royal Ordnance and British Aerospsce and British Shipbuilders and losing ICI

          I read Marat who thinks US has 500,000 in VA and 800,000 in DoD for a military of 1.3 million and how bloated it all is

    2. Roquentin

      I think you’re getting at the real problem with the US military, beyond any specific technology. A hopelessly corrupt and graft riddled contracting system which has completely overtaken the US military industrial complex. A contracting system which will only continue to get more bloated. No US presidential administration will do anything about it, Harris certainly wouldn’t have and there’s no chance Trump will either.

      1. jsn

        And the courts are packed to rule in favor of the lucrative status quo.

        That leaves Congress…

        We’re ****ed.

      2. Skip Intro

        Think of the F-35 as the manifestation of the unipolar moment as embodied by the titans of finance capital. It is the new AFaaS* model pioneered by the US, and those countries whose leaders have convinced to rely on it will discover a whole new meaning of vassalage…

        *Air Force as a Service – A high-entry, higher-maintenance cost model which turns customers into captives clients.

        1. Lazar

          Air Force as a Service – You don’t have proper air force at all, and you pay money to some foreign country to fly their fighter jets over your territory and keep you safe from foreign countries flying their fighter jets over your territory. I think Slovenia does that.

        2. Paul Greenwood

          F-35 is the disarmament weapon. It was designed as you say to make NATO airforces US subservient through software locks and Lockheed spares control akin to John Deere and farmers

          U.K. was gung ho and built two flattops around the plane but cannot afford to buy what they put on the wish list. Germany chose F-35 but has none and Switzerland went there too but US cannot solve the cooling problem or engine burnout northern 29% availability

          No US or NATO air force can sustain the sortie rates the Russians attain.

    3. beachwalker

      I wonder if an aspect of Russian strategy is to avoid a Pearl Harbor or Sputnick event that would bring not only the military/think tank compex, but the whole country, to the painful realization that it is losing the weapons development game. If the West is intent on doing things the wrong way, why wake it up?

      1. Paul Greenwood

        To be brutally frank K do not think Russia or China give a damn what Pindostan thinks ! They are ready for war and like most states of readiness they cannot be sustained.

        Just because US goes out in bathrobe and slippers to threaten the neighbours does not mean they have not suited up in armour to fight

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          I do not know why some commentors insist on overestimating US capabilities. We just saw in Israel that the US, with Israel, French and UK support, was unable to prevent Iran from hitting pre-designated targets in Israel precisely. As in the US and its allies were given textbook conditions for stopping Iran’s weapons and failed. Similarly, the planned three wave retaliation on Iran wound up being only one wave and most independent experts believe did minimal damage.

          The US army is below 500,00 men v. around 800 bases all over the world. The US has been unable to meet recruitment targets for all its services.

          US weapons are overpriced, fussy and require tons of maintenance. Note that the above-mentioned US-allied defense of Israel cost about $2.3 billion while the Iran attack cost was estimated (Western sources) at ~ $90 million.

          In other words, I don’t see how you sustain these fantasies about the US.

          Or was your comment missing a /sarc tag?

          1. JW

            I think this is a really good point to make and this article is apposite. Most ‘intelligence’ is now open source. I read widely and have formed the view that many ‘experts’ no longer do because they haven’t the time and things are moving so rapidly that without keeping on top of things you quickly lose context. The ignorance of military commentators is shocking – but is probably largely because they dare not reveal the real state of affairs and perhaps don’t understand them.
            I DO understand the politics. I KNOW ‘the west’ is losing and in panic mode and I KNOW the British response because I’ve lived with it for years – the public schoolboys who still run the MOD look down on and feel superior to ‘the enemy’. Their contempt cultivates and generates their ignorance. I knew some of their predecessors and they were much better informed and circumspect BUT it was in a more slow moving time.
            There will be people in Russia and China gearing up for a much bigger conflict. I am increasingly of the view that Britain has lost the edge it used to have with diplomacy and that all they understand is a good hiding. Just like Israel. Part of me wants it to happen..

  7. Carolinian

    Interesting post. It sounds like the Russians put their tech geniuses to making weapons whereas the EuroAmericans (which includes the Israelis) put theirs–per Conor’s post yesterday–to work on surveillance. The former see an external threat and the latter an internal threat no matter how much they pretend to be afraid of Russia or China.

    And if this new missile is a kinetic weapon then we’ve come full circle back to Napoleon time when cannon balls used kinetic force to mow down opponents. The explosions took place inside the gun barrels and not out on the field as per Hollywood (there were a few weapons that used fused shells). Napoleon called artillery the king of battles.

      2. LY

        “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads” – Jeff Hammerbacher

        ‘I saw the best minds of my generation writing spam filters.’ – Neal Stephenson

        As a electrical/computer/software engineer – I regularly get inquires for financial firms (notably quants and algorithmic trading platforms), cloaked in the language of innovation and excitement. Hardly any for wireless, telecom, etc.

      3. Balan Aroxdale

        I believe Andrei Martyanov had an observation that Russia, while having less engineering graduates, nevertheless converts more of these in absolute numbers into industry. The US engineers go into internet and finance software instead.

    3. Yves Smith Post author

      I am sorry it I implied this is only a kinetic weapon. It can carry payloads, including a nuclear weapon.

      It appears, but we are not yet sure, that this first deployment showcases only its kinetic + heat effects. Upon reflection, the Russians may have been interested in isolating that.

  8. Afro

    A wise man I knew told me that he remembered Sputnik as a child because, as a child prodigy, the quality of his education suddenly improved. He got more attention at school and so on.

    I don’t see anything happening like that now. American academic science is largely held up by graduate students and postdocs from India, China, Iran, etc, there won’t be any appetite to many any large investments into human capital.

    1. Mikel

      And the question also becomes: who cares about the USA as country and not just a marketplace? A place where it only matters to make some money by any means necessary?

      1. John k

        It seems Asians are still drawn to us advanced Ed, maybe because of comp in China for the better schools and/or some thinking they might stay for quality of life. But China, at least, has hugely improved quality of life since Deng, plus some Chinese are getting harassed as security risk. Seems fewer might stay going forward.

    3. Bsn

      “I don’t see anything happening like that now.” You are correct. There are a few programs for TAG (talented and gifted) students, but not many. Lots of energy and teacher staff time goes into “inclusion” with much focus on teaching coding, especially aimed at getting girls into science – an honourable effort. However, any efforts at helping students learn maths, especially more advance levels, is sorely lacking. Coding can be done primarily by software and of course one positive development of AI is its ability to write, especially coding. Instead of needing 10 engineers to “code” you only now need one to edit and confirm what the AI has done. Ergo, there are fewer jobs in the sciences yet many in economics – that’s where the grad students are going, otherwise they’ll have no work.

      1. Cian

        and of course one positive development of AI is its ability to write, especially coding. Instead of needing 10 engineers to “code” you only now need one to edit and confirm what the AI has done.

        This really isn’t true, though for some reason a lot of the industry are to determined to pretend it is true.

        AI can turn out boilerplate code (smart templates essentially). This has some utility, but it’s very much at the margins. And the biggest gains are in areas that are pretty inefficient (due to using coding languages/platforms that require lots of boiler plate). A lot of money is going in to relearning that there is no silver bullet.

  9. Es s Ce Tera

    Speaking of huge underground reinforced bunkers, aren’t aircraft carriers huge aboveground reinforced bunkers?

    1. redleg

      They’re huge, but not reinforced. Modern warships are not armored like older ships, and US carriers in particular have never been moor than nominally armored, sacrificing protection for speed and striking power.

      1. Michaelmas

        Modern warships are not armored like older ships, and US carriers in particular have never been more than nominally armored, sacrificing protection for speed and striking power.

        US carriers are sectioned, however, so the commander can cut off a damaged, waterlogged segment to keep it afloat longer. That meant it might have taken two or three 1970s-vintage Soviet carrier killer Moskit-Sunburn missiles to sink one US carrier.

        With 2020s-era Chinese and Russian hypersonics — let alone this Oreshnik — a carrier has little to zero chance of surviving a single hit.

        1. redleg

          A mission kill is more effective than a kill. This applies to infantry and aircraft carriers alike.
          It takes more resources to recover a wounded soldier or aircraft carrier than a dead one.

          There is no effective difference if a carrier is sunk or ablaze, except the blazing carrier is going to require an enormous amount of resources to simply get to safety that a sunken carrier wouldn’t require. Sink a CV and its useful assets are gone. Damage a CV and its assets are gone for some time, time that is critical in combat, plus whatever time-sensitive resources it takes to get it out of danger and back in service.

          Same thing with infantry- Sgt. Joe gets shot and it takes 2 guys to evac him removing 3 soldiers from the battlefield. Sgt. Joe gets killed and his corpse can be dealt with later.
          30% casualties to a unit in ground combat is considered a mission kill as the unit is combat ineffective.

      2. Es s Ce Tera

        It does make one wonder if a direct hit would simply make a hole or if the impact would spread through the entire structure.

        I wonder how the impact crater illustration above translates for water.

        1. redleg

          Fire. Fire kills ships, especially carriers.
          Akagi, Lexington, Hornet, Franklin, Princeton, Taiho, etc. None of those were sunk by damage, if they sank at all. They were killed by fire. One hit can eliminate a carrier, and has (Akagi, Taiho, Franklin), if that hit starts the myriad of combustible and flammable materials on board afire.

          1. John k

            I’m imagining a kinzhal passing thru a flight deck and straight down thru all the others, not cooling until extinguished by explosively boiling water under the ship, and leaving gaping holes all the way down. On the plus side, the fires would be fairly quickly extinguished.
            I seem to recall one kinzhal destroying a bunker 60-ft under earth and concrete earlier in the war.

            2. Captain Obvious

              You should imagine anti-ship missiles (and anti-ship shells of past times) exploding inside of a ship, because that’s what they are supposed to do. Going completly trough is called overpenetration and does less damage (as every World of Warships player would confirm :-) ).

      3. PlutoniumKun

        You can make an argument that hypersonics make carriers more, not less useful. Hypersonics are ideal for striking fixed objects (such as airfields), but are inherently less accurate plus there is the major difficulty of providing any form of active terminal guidance. It’s likely the differerence of a CEP of 100 metres to one of 2-5metres. So the mobility of carriers provides at least some notional protection. The only protection a fixed airfield has its its sheer size and sprawl, and most small island airfields lack even this.

        1. Es s Ce Tera

          I’m not so sure. The Oreshnik is an area weapon, doesn’t need precision, also can MIRV. At Mach 10 time on target is 4 min 52 sec from 1000 km away, 10 mins from 2500 km (distance from Moscow to London). 17 minutes from 3500 km (distance from Moscow to mid-Atlantic). Assuming a launch from Moscow, a carrier in mid-Atlantic moving at 30 knots would be only 15 km away from where it was when the Oreshnik launched. If it detects anything at all (do their radars face up, I wonder) then assuming it detects incoming at 200-400 km it has 1 minute 56 secs to turn and it will be 1.83 km away when it began the turn, or 1830 meters. And while the delivery vehicle itself may not be able to do active terminal guidance, its delivered package(s) could.

          So I imagine the US Navy will now need to stay very far away from Russian and Chinese landmasses, anything under 1000km would be high probability of kill.

          1. Captain Obvious

            Your up-to-second-accurate calculation (4 min 52 sec from 1000 km away) assumes that ballistic missiles fly in a straight line from A to B at constant speed, which they don’t. Their (quasi-)ballistic trajectory tend to be quite curverd, with different speed in different parts of it.

            Also, this type of weapon is intended for stationary targets. For ships, they already have a plethora of missiles (subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic).

            P.S. Also, 4 min 52 sec for 1000 km means 10 min for about 2.058km, not 2500km.

  10. Socal Rhino

    Ted Postal’s immediate reaction on seeing the video (appearing on Daniel Davis’s channel) was that this involved significant new technology. Among other things, he pointed out the orientation of the sub-munitions to achieve stable destinations but arriving at staggered times.

    Martyanov has commented that form for Putin is to announce production of a new capability only after production is well underway. US should assume more are available for immediate use and the stockpile will be growing.

    1. Michaelmas

      Ted Postal’s immediate reaction … (was to point out) …the orientation of the sub-munitions to achieve stable destinations but arriving at staggered times.

      It’s Postol, and he’s correct.

      The first impression from the videos was of the striking targeting specificity of the hits: they’re staggered — very rapidly — so they run along a line and then finish by coming back to target the area in the center of that line, to further penetrate and finish off whatever was there.

      So this is 2024 state of the art bunker/silo penetration, with a single MIRVed kinetic rocket launched from Russia’s Kapustin Yar rocket base some 800 kilometers away, at the touch of a button.

      Now compare that to the recent massively expensive and planning-intensive Israeli-US air campaign to bomb Iran, which required a mass fleet of manned bombers, manned F-35 fighter escorts, and in-flight air refueling, and which also — if some accounts are true — was largely aborted as soon as the S-400 air-defense and EW systems, which the Russians had given to the Iranians, locked onto those planes before they were even over Iran.

      1. IEL

        Excellent comparison. One difference is that Tehran is more than twice as far from Israel (~1800 km) but if it is developed from the RS-26 then the Oreshnik would have a range of >5000 km anyway.

  11. Jack

    Great article. However, I have one disagreement. “Now the US is the clear leader in some important weapons categories, such as submarines.” This is no longer true. First, Russia now has more subs than the US. Their latest subs, the Yasen is extremely quiet. It carries the hypersonic Zircon missile. which travels at Mach 9 and is nuclear capable. Yes, the US is probably silghtly ahead of the Russians in that we have 3 Seawolfs and more Virginia class subs than they have Yasens. But in submarine warfare if you can’t find the other guy numerical superiority doesn’t matter as much. For instance in 2018 a Yasen class sub entered the Atlantic and the US looked for weeks and couldn’t find it. This was reported on 60 minutes. Getting trail on your opponent and staying there important. Once you lose the guy its almost impossible to find them unless they cross a well surveilled choke point. I know. I personally spent long hours on watch while in trail on Russian subs during the cold war. And I can tell you even then, many times we were sent out to find one that we knew was somewhere in the area, but couldn’t locate it. And those were the older subs. All of this to say, yes, the US might have a slight edge in capability, but not enough to make a difference. And the US has no hypersonic weapons. One Yasen could launch, clear datum, and take out a carrier battle group hundreds of miles away, destroying every surface ship in minutes before they even knew what hit them.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      *Sigh*

      Andrei Martyanov, who was a former Russian naval officer, and a huge Russia cheerleader, says US subs are the best and by more than a tiny margin. The fact that they can now serve as platforms for more formidable weapons does not make them better subs. I defer to Martyanov.

      1. Jack

        I was not saying that US subs were not better than Russia’s. I did say that the US has an edge in capability. The point I was making is that the edge the US has does not make a difference. Russia has reached the point where their subs are good enough. We (the US) can’t find them like we used to be able to. Submarine warfare is not like surface or air warfare. You have to be able to find the other guy. If you can’t, it makes no difference if your platform is larger, faster, or more quiet.

      2. Cian

        This may be true, but I wonder if the US has the capability to replace, or maintain them.

        Russia never prioritized naval assets (for obvious reasons).

    2. Jams O'Donnell

      Yes Jack has a point. And additionally, the US is short of both enough technically able crew, and ship repair / shipbuilding facilities. I read an article the other day (sorry, can’t remember where) where a US Admiral was complaining that they should be building something like 2.5 subs per year but are only managing 1.2 (approximate figures from memory).
      Also, here:

      https://militarywatchmagazine.com/video/russian-air-force-vs-us-air-force-summary-global-war

      is a short video showing US and Russian fighter plane comparison. Logically, this disparity will be widespread over many other areas.

      Russian research in war technology seems to be very advanced, and while this may be a disadvantage to the larger economy just now, spin-offs from this research may be useful for civilian products later (as in non-stick Teflon was).

      Lastly, US military technology has been distinguished in the last couple of decades by a large number of conspicuous failures, From Zumwalt to F-22 etc

      1. redleg

        US weapons are designed to maximize profit. This doesn’t mean that they don’t work, but mission capability is not the first priority. When that’s the case, Zumwalts, F-22s, etc. aren’t failures.

        Deindustrialization has severely impaired, if not eliminated, the US’ capability to fight a war of attrition. This is dangerous because nukes are the the only weapon left once the rest have been consumed.

      2. Cian

        This is true generally of the US navy. The modern US navy is largely a legacy C20th navy, and as those ships age out they cannot be replaced. Shipbuilding capacity matters, and the US doesn’t really have it any more.

        Another problem is a shortage of naval officers.

    3. Es s Ce Tera

      Doesn’t Russia also have the Shkval hypersonic torpedo? Which can also be dropped on top of subs via rocket? And can be nuclear? How does an Ohio, Seawolf or Los Angeles evade this? I’ve always wondered.

      1. PlutoniumKun

        The Shkval isn’t hypersonic, it has a max speed of around 250mph – extremely fast for an underwater object. It also has a very low range.

        The Shkval shares the same advantages and disadvantages of hypersonics. There is always a payoff between extreme speed, accuracy and payload. Like hypersonics it can’t be provided (so far as we know) with high quality terminal active guidance without some major design compromises, and the demand for power reduces payload significantly. You can’t beat physics. All weapons are a trade off, which in turn has to be balanced out with tactical and strategic limitations.

        1. Polar Socialist

          Best explanation for Shkval I’ve seen is that it was designed as a counter weapon against wire-guided torpedoes: when a Soviet submarine detects an enemy torpedo launch, it immediately launches Shkval towards the launch noise, thus forcing the enemy submarine to cut the wire(s) of it’s torpedo(es) and start evading – Shkval will reach it’s target much faster, and no captain is going to take the chance that it misses due to it’s speed.

          Self-homing torpedoes have rendered this kind of counter-measure mostly useless, though.

  12. ilsm

    Unmanned air vehicles are a non starter for USAF: who would run the AF if there were no pilots. Those wings on the chests are “universal management” badges!

    As to air cover for Ukraine 2023 offensive: that would have required air dominance: suppression of air defenses and MiG sweeps as did not work in South/North Vietnam. Such air dominance requires a large number of aircraft, serving varied roles/missions, and too much of logistics a long way from USA. The available bases from the Dneiper west are totally inadequate, and would be targeted. In short the size of tactical air force for the 2023 offensive would have been much bigger than US deployed in Southeast Asia in the late 1960’s. There are now inadequate forces, with low readiness and even less logistics!

    Oreshnik: Interesting, I cannot speculate on flight pattern or trajectories. Rocket science: accuracy, keeping MIRV’s with submunitions accurate and clustered (!!!), heat shielding (!!!).

    I have not seen that US’ usual MIC suppliers have kept any hypersonic object from losing control! Matybe Spacex can do for this what they do for attaining orbit.

    Oreshnik is probably very expensive, multistage rocket with exceptional controls for accuracy.

    The warhead is Putin’s “new laws of physics”.

    Russia has always been far advanced in basic science! The perceived difficulty was making the science a product such as a weapon. Seems that is no longer an issue for Russia.

    US on the other hand seems to have become inept at delivering new weapons. See F-35, which needs a new power plant when no technical break through is coming in power! See Ford class where US Navy gets ships that take years to shake out!

    The US problems include: profit and lobbyists (root of rest), inept science, inadequate testing of product (or corrupt: tests not performed are passes), technology “gates” too loose (inept tech gets built).

    Permanent war has consumed a large part of the US’ huge national security budget! R&D and procurement as inept as it is consumes around 30% of the war spending!

    Given the MIC system I do not see how a race over Oreshnik will do anything but pay dividends!

    US has spent itself into disarmament!

    1. Balan Aroxdale

      Unmanned air vehicles are a non starter for USAF: who would run the AF if there were no pilots. Those wings on the chests are “universal management” badges!

      Alon Mizrahi recently wrote about the darker side of this mentality in the context of the Israeli air force. He argues the manned component is an essential component of the display of aerial dominance. That death be delivered by a warriors hand “onsite”, as a direct demonstration of (racial) superiority. Figuratively speaking; obviously the planes launch missiles from far away.

      Hence Israel simply must have piloted aircraft deliver bombs all the way to Iran, and has invested little to nothing in long range missile attack systems. Whereas the Iranians have put everything into missiles and have virtually no traditional airforce to speak of. The practicalities of the former and latter strategies have now be laid bare in the recent strike and counterstrikes between the two countries. Manned delivery systems are increasingly an archaic 20th century staple of air power.

      2. cfraenkel

        Those wings on the chests are “universal management” badges!

        This is the real, if never stated out loud, reason for splitting out the Space Force into its own organization.

      3. Alex Cox

        The USAF’s new B21 bomber – the B2 replacement – has a pilot’s seat, but can also be flown without a pilot.

    2. cousinAdam

      Truth is truly stranger than fiction! Thanks for this – truly made my day. “When the going gets [truly ;^] weird……”
      And special thanks to Yves for this “just the facts, ma’am” post delivered at nearly hypersonic speed. I was quite the rocket nerd in my younger days so learning some of these ‘juicy tidbits’ about Oreshnik via the pretty impeccable sources you quote is rather breathtaking – 6 X 6 warheads (“bunker buster” is an inadequate term imho) in a single missile impacting their targets at Mach 10 – RUFKM?! The eyewitness quote is telling – “Yuzhmash is gone . Only dust remains.” The mental image of a hypersonic Khinzal punching a lethal hole through an aircraft carrier pales in comparison to Oreshnik shredding it (and its crew) into little pieces- possibly a more humane ending (no snark intended). Quoting Yogi Berra – “It’s like a whole new [Yankee] Stadium!”

  13. VTDigger

    The west reminds me of 1939 Japan right now where the IJN was building super-heavy battleships like Yamato/Musashi in an era where it had already been clearly shown that the aircraft carrier had made them completely obsolete. This has always been mysterious to me why they leaned in so heavily to an easily countered unit.

    The US/UK is doing the same thing, but with the aircraft carrier. Mindlessly building force projection strategies around super-heavy carriers that would be smoldering hulks within minutes of any hot war with a peer adversary. One hypersonic at a couple million looks like a deal when the target is the $13 Billion Gerald R Ford.

    The battleship became obsolete once torpedoes could be dropped from a cheap biplane (see the Bismark). Now the aircraft carrier will go the same way because drones and heavy missiles are economic and plentiful.

    1. ilsm

      Interesting!

      Aircraft carriers have had operational limits from land air power since the beginning!

      I am reading Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942. (1st of 3 books) I am USAF vet.

      IJN (as USN) had an intrenched battleships corps (black shoe), versus a very small (brown shoe) air dominance corps. Yamamoto, believed in aircraft carriers, was the last serving officer who was at the Battle of Tsushima victory over the Russians. He had commanded battleships, but became brown shoe!

      18 inch guns on Yamato and Musashi would have donminated even the 16 inchers on USS Missouri!!

    2. redleg

      Exactly.
      Japan focused on top-tier quality in training (pilots, night combat, infantry) and equipment (long lance, Nambu, A6M) but didn’t account for attrition.
      Japan relied on importing critical materials and was vulnerable to a blockade.
      Japanese industrial capacity was not adequate to fight the war they chose to fight.
      Japanese leadership generally failed to adapt to dynamic situations, tactically and strategically, and even when they did there was substantial internal resistance to change.

      Replace “Japan” in the above with “US” and find where it doesn’t work.

    3. Raymond Sim

      “Battleships became obsolete.” is a fallacy. They were crucial weapons systems throughout the war.

      The reason so many crucial battles were carrier battles has as much to do with the exceptional vulnerability of aircraft carriers to air attack as anything else. They were exceptionally vulnerable then, and they still are today.

      1. redleg

        Not a fallacy, e.g. the Taffys would have been slaughtered if it was a fallacy… but this isn’t the venue to argue the point.

        1. Raymond Sim

          Lol. If the Taffys had been slaughtered would that bolster my argument? I hope you can see it would not.

          What does bolster it is that the Taffys were ready to sacrifice themselves to keep the Japanese heavy combatants from intervening.

          1. redleg

            The IJN couldn’t slaughter them because they were evading constant air attack from the Taffys. Slow, small cheap aircraft carriers effectively defeated a strong, fast, competent, expensive fleet of 6? CA (there were 10, but i forget how many were sunk getting there) and 4 BB. The 300+ aircraft from the Taffys won the battle even if they didn’t sink the IJN fleet- the big ships were so busy evading incessant air attacks that they couldn’t use their speed to close or accurately aim their guns and torpedoes. Plus the crews outside the armored spaces were slaughtered by strafing planes. In addition, look what happened to that IJN force before and after that battle- major losses caused by submarines and aircraft just like what would happen today. These ships were functionally obsolete by 1940 even if they were useful.

            The only example of a BB sinking a CV is HMS Glorious in 1940, and that was due to Glorious having no planes aboard after a ferry run to Norway.
            Are BBs useful in modern war? Yes, until you add operational costs (a gigantic crew, fuel hogs, etc.). But useful or not they are still obsolete, not the cutting edge of naval technology, and that was apparent in 1940 and is even more so today.

            IJN vs Taffys is the historical equivalent of what Yemen is doing- cheap drones and precision missiles vs high-tech warships.

            1. Captain Obvious

              Are BBs useful in modern war? Yes, until you add operational costs (a gigantic crew, fuel hogs, etc.).

              Useful for what exactly? At whom would USS Missouri fire its 16 inch salvos in anger? Houthis? Iran? Gaza? China?

      2. Jams O'Donnell

        WWII battleships were very vulnerable to aircraft too. Witness the Yamato, Repulse, Prince of Wales, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and Bismark and Tirpitz, and an Italian one whose name I can’t remember, sunk by a German glide bomb, and Pearl Harbour. All in all battleships were only useful for shore bombardment during land invasions or for creating artificial reefs.

        1. redleg

          Roma. A beautiful ship. Warspite was nearly sunk the same way.

          Add to that Musashi, Hiei (although crippled by Callaghan’s fleet), Pennsylvania at Okinawa, the Italian fleet at Taranto, and lord knows how many cruisers (Chicago, Dorsetshire, Mikuma, etc.).

  14. HH

    An unexamined aspect of the Russian clustered hypersonic impact munitions is that that they can be installed in much greater numbers as the payload of the largest Russian ICBMs, e.g., the Sarmat. This means it would be feasible to deliver hundreds of hypersonic striking elements with a single missile with global reach. Russia can now destroy almost any military facility, hardened or not, anywhere, at its discretion.

  15. Paul Damascene

    Good essay and responses. I applaud the sensible impulse to concede areas where the West may still retain a technological or functional advantage, but, as in the previous post, it probably isn’t submarines. The Yasens, the diesel-electrics, which US has almost none of, not to mention that Poseidon launching Borei– ships are platforms whose real measure is what they can launch, and Zircons tip the balance quite heavily Russia’s way.

    Radar? Color me skeptical.

    F-35s may single-handedly disarm NATO airpower by being unreliable, unsustainable, and unaffordable and under-performing.

    Satellites, maybe? Keyhole satellites, number of satellites, breadth of coverage. But, then again, Russia leads in satellite killing capabilities. So, there’s that.

    But the general discussion around the emergence of conventional weapons with strategic effects seems on point. Regarding the Oreshnik specifically:

    Brings US staging areas anywhere in Europe into the cross-hairs, this is even apart from the interdiction of sea lanes. Ditto air bases, which can take 100 missiles to destroy–and that may require many more than a hundred to get a hundred that get past AD. One Oreshnik would significantly disable an airfield, 3-4 to destroy it.

    Ritter makes the point that these seem almost tailor-made to take out missile bases–potentially, we have a looming Cuban Missile Crisis in 2026 wherein Russia destroys Dark Eagle bases in Europe as soon as Dark Eagles are determined to have arrived. But the Aegis Ashore bases in Poland & Romania must be at the top of current target lists. So ports, staging areas, air bases, missile bases, and perhaps bases where nukes are stored.

    1. AG

      It is of secondary nature but as the “LRHW” goes – it does not exist yet. And as someone Germany-based I seriously hope this remains true well after 2026. We cannot handle a situation where 5 minutes are on for verification.

      But so far Berlin does not get it. The incompetence is astonishing considering that those missiles are suppsosed to be stationed on the very territory of Germany. As if it didn´t concern us.

      I hope it´s possible to at least raise awareness for Oreshnik etc. with pieces as the lead above. One can only try and spread the info and give it to MPs, reporters, NGOs.

      So if someone here knows people from Bundeswehr – because I don´t – tell them. That btw concerns the misgivings over F-35s too. Nobody talks about it. In the 1960s at least German press destroyed German DoD for the Starfighter scandal.

    2. Chris

      The main problem preventing peace is that the current leaders of the West haven’t ever been punched in the face while growing up.

      I came from a working class background and growing up I had my fair share of fights as a child. Some I won and some I lost but either way I got my blackeyes and bloody noses. However, I also learned about the consequences that comes from fighting.

      Today’s western leaders probably have never been in a real fight and act like a bunch of entitled spoiled little brats who have never had to face the consequences of their actions.

      1. Felix

        Chris
        You’re making a valid point. An insulated bunch in so many ways. The thought occurred to me that why is this overwhelmingly true of the West and not (entirely true of) the rest of the world. The only country where I can comment on this topic without doing research is Mexico, both Amlo and Sheinbaum are highly educated and come from educated families, but none could be classed as wealthy when viewed among their peer groups.
        Western national level leadership with its collective idiocy come from a spectrum of backgrounds, running the gamut from political and social elite to blue collar, even multi racial if one witnesses US presence at the UN.
        I for one would welcome a face punching a la the shoe attack on Bush across the US political spectrum. Couldn’t hurt.

    3. mrsyk

      F-35s may single-handedly disarm NATO airpower by being unreliable, unsustainable, and unaffordable and under-performing.. Seems to me that F-35s are the reason the US is committed to traditional strategies in warfare as well, being an enormous rice bowl and draining funds from alternative research and development for one, but worse, introducing profit bias into war strategy.

    4. redleg

      This attack calls into question the concept that it takes 100 missiles to neutralize an airbase.
      1. Kinetic munitions are more effective vs hard targets than explosives
      2. One of these weapons can deliver 36 kinetic warheads.
      3. They can’t be intercepted.

      Three of these missiles can deliver 108 effective warheads that can’t be intercepted. Compare to 100 conventional interceptable missiles. With this system it only takes 3 missiles to take out an airbase and can do it so quickly that defensive preparations might not be implemented before the warheads hit.
      This weapon appears to have more bang for the buck than conventional missiles.

  16. .Tom

    > the great summer counteroffensive of 2023 … should have been seen as a humiliating defeat. Perhaps I missed it, but I have not come across any signs that that has been internalized by NATO or the US, meaning no/not enough of a post mortem much the less recognition of the need for a serious rethink of how the West wages war.

    It’s even worse than this when we factor in that the AFU forces were large and well equipped compared to any European Nato force.

    Each country must have military specialists who have a reasonable understanding of the situation but cannot say it. In The Emperor’s New Clothes the child blurts out the truth and the city people accept it but the parade goes on. In our reality, the city people can’t see that the cloths are old and worn out so the child’s words are dismissed.

    1. John k

      They’ve been inundated for decades with msm informing them how great and powerful the west is, Russia just gas station with nukes etc. and as if nukes are no big deal.

  17. Ignacio

    So far the only official reaction i have read of is that of an interview with Barrot at the BBC, French Foreign Minister. The voice of French diplomacy (you know, “modern diplomacy” as per “Jungle” Borrell) says that there are not red lines and “as for as long as necessary”, and, well, he actually didn’t say it but you can add “put Ukraine in better position” and all that crap we have been hearing for years now. Then of course “we have to increase defence spending” the typical phrase let there in a vacuum in which the ends seem to be just that, increase defence spending, without any clear indication of the who, when, where, how or what goal to achieve. The interviewers never ask molesting questions or these are erased from the list. We can expect here in Europe less social spending in exchange of nothing to be achieved with more defence spending. Oh, but he states the why, because Russia, Russia, Russia!, and each centimetre the Russians advance in Ukraine puts them, well, 1 cm closer to Brussels, Paris, Berlin etc. Everything very childish as usual. Embarrassing to check, once again, how low have fallen the supposed leaders and speakers.

    1. Michaelmas

      Ignacio: We can expect here in Europe less social spending in exchange of nothing to be achieved with more defence spending.

      Same as it ever was.

      George Orwell: ‘War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.’

      Ibid: ‘War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.’

  18. Aurelien

    My essay last week was on a similar theme (albeit before the Oreshnik strike, so I won’t reproduce it all here. But I want to emphasise two things. First, the West does not understand Russian military thinking, and arguably never has. Right from the strategic level downwards (which the West can’t do anyway) the West really has no idea what Russia is doing, and why, and you cannot oppose what you are not intellectually equipped to understand. No amount of money is going to help unless you know what you want to buy and it’s available. In any event, there are no purely technological answers to political problems.

    Second, this gives the Russians, in the politically-relevant near future, the capacity to inflict nuclear-level destruction on the West, without the West being usefully able to defend against it, or develop anything similar. The political consequences of this are staggering (I’m starting to sketch out an essay for next week.) The western political elite, used to giving orders rather than taking them, may have some kind of collective nervous breakdown.

    A coda: during the Cold War, most western nations developed underground command centres for use in war. (The British one was actually based on one constructed in the 1930s. You could, and perhaps still can, walk from Parliament to Trafalgar Square underground.) They were generally 10-15 metres below ground, and “nuclear hardened” as the jargon had it. I’ve been to a number in different countries. They were not intended to survive a direct nuclear hit (nothing much does) but to be able to operate in an environment where nuclear (and biological and chemical) weapons were being used, and to be safe from conventional attack. You can forget that now. Western governments have literally nowhere to hide. Think about that.

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      Yes, I apologize for only having started your post of last week and therefore not mentioning it here.

      But how do you square the French Scalp pile on with the nervous breakdown notion? Or is France different because it has nukes?

      1. Aurelien

        No need to apologise, Yves!
        I think France is different to some degree, but I also think that the centime hasn’t dropped yet. The French used to have tradition of understanding large-scale military operations, as did the Germans, but I think they’ve lost it now. They are floundering like everybody else, and the political and strategic class here is nothing like as good as it used to be. I think we are perhaps 6-12 months from the nervous breakdown I described, because it will take that long for reality to sink in. My worry is that the West as a whole has a political class which has no experience of weakness and inferiority, and doesn’t even know how to behave.

      2. Ignacio

        Might we have a glimpse on that nervous breakdown tomorrow in the NATO meeting summoned by Zelenskyy? May be not, one can expect more of the same but someone should watch carefully the body language. An excess of virile posturing might tell us something.

        1. southern appalachian

          Apologies but I was thinking France was recently ejected from Niger, and the election was humiliating. And then in the US I can’t imagine the administration admitting any sort of failure in the run up to the election. In both cases domestic legitimacy might be driving the lack of reflection and aggressive posture.

          I’m anxious about the breakdowns. It won’t go well here in the US, my worry.

    2. Colonel Smithers

      Merci, Aurelien.

      One looks forward and, with regard to that nervous breakdown, it’s not just military, but economic.

      One apologises profusely to Yves for lowering the tone, but, with some rare exceptions, such Dominique de Villepin yesterday and today, most western politicians have their heads in the sand and are exposing their thinking parts.

      With regard to that underground walk, it’s still around and extends to the palaces and ministerial town houses in the vicinity.

      1. Ignacio

        At least France has Mr. de Villepin. In Spain there is nothing of the like. Two weeks ago, the foreign affairs ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK sent a warning to the RF saying they were going to intensify support for Ukraine with 50.000 million € as if all that money would make stronger fortresses of Kurajove, Velika Novosilka, Toresk, Chasiv Yar, Kupiansk etc. Delusional is too mild of an adjective here.

        1. ChrisFromGA

          I think that observation (money solves everything to the West) may have to do with the impending nervous breakdown Aurelien is referring to. Of course, he’ll have to confirm.

          My own observation is that this gang has relied on technology for so long that they simply cannot fathom a scenario where their magical tech can’t save the day.

          The reality of war is that air power doesn’t win real wars. The US is used to calling in drone strikes from a safe bunker in Las Vegas. Or taking on some foe like Qaddafi, a middlin’ satrap with no air defense.

          We’ve spent the last 50 years since the end of Vietnam doing everything possible to avoid the sort of brutal, hand-to-hand combat that we’re seeing in those Ukrainian/Russian towns like Chasiv Yar. The high point of Western doctrine post-Vietnam was Colin Powell’s belief that wars should be short, with goals very narrowly defined. Get in, and get out quick. No boots on the ground, or if so, only long enough to achieve some narrow objective.

          With the First Gulf War victory over Saddam, the Powell doctrine seemed triumphant. But something slipped away over the next 30+ years. The GWoT, Iraq war 2, and the long war in Afghanistan showed that it wasn’t so easy to stick to the Powell doctrine.

          The truth that people like de Villepin and Lloyd Austin don’t want to face is that Western cultures have gone soft. There is no stomach for the knife in the eye brutal violence that real war requires in their citizenry. Nobody is bringing back the draft. If they try, it will be the end of them!

          If their beautiful tech fails them, they’ve got nothing. China and Russia still have the warrior mentality because their societies haven’t been wussified.

    3. redleg

      This is where the US first strike doctrine becomes truly dangerous. Faced with this weapon, the US could (I have no inside info on this) see it as the strategic threat it is and, instead of using diplomacy (not going to happen with morons like Blinken at the helm), use nukes to take out the production, testing, and launch facilities. This is of course the worst case scenario, but it falls into US strategic doctrine as I understand it. Add in an astonishingly large number of end-time Christian US flag officers and this becomes more likely- there is a dearth of cooler heads.
      I hope I’m wrong but the next few weeks are going to be dangerous.

    4. Michaelmas

      Aurelien: The western political elite, used to giving orders rather than taking them, may have some kind of collective nervous breakdown.

      You’re an optimist and the collective nervous breakdown is the optimistic scenario (though still with the potential for nuclear worst-case-scenarios).

      A likelier scenario is that the West’s policymakers are simply unable to get their minds around the reality. I saw your piece last week and I don’t disagree with it. Something you don’t address, however, is that the West’s political class is increasingly composed of literal near-morons.

      I’m in the UK currently. Here’s Liz Truss getting lost trying to leave the room after her leadership launch announcement —

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEyV_BsS3KI

      Here’s David Lammy, current UK Foreign Secretary, on a British TV quiz show earlier in his career, getting every answer wrong, including —
      Q: Who succeeded Henry VIII? Lammy: Henry VII
      Q: What blue cheese traditionally goes with stilton? Lammy: Red Leicester

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DsR4Nx-ELgc

      And if Starmer has made someone this stupid the responsible UK foreign secretary, what’s that say about Starmer?

      Furthermore, I also lived in the US for many years, worked as a journalist there, and got to attend Senate hearings where I had the chance to witness at close quarters the likes of H. Clinton, L. Graham, J. Lieberman, J. Biden, and others talking and comporting themselves. Heck, I’ve even got a letter from Joe Lieberman praising a piece I wrote in my files somewhere. They were as stupid as the UK politicians, with an additional aspect of openly evident psychopathy/malignant narcissism that didn’t show up in UK pols till the likes of Boris Johnson.

      After everything, we come back to the question: what sort of mentality chooses to undertake an aggressive war against a militarily superior enemy? And the answer seems to be: stupid psychopaths. That’s who is making policy in the West.

      Not good.

      1. John Wright

        Years ago I spoke with someone who identified himself as a former secret service officer in the Bill Clinton White House.

        His disdain for HRC was obvious as he stated “she would drop papers on the floor and expect others to pick them up”.

        Perhaps the USA elite will be dropping a lot of problems on the USA and expecting the populace to “pick them up”.

      2. hk

        To be fair, who succeeded Henry VIII is a tough question! Everyone knows about Mary and Elizabeth, but even those who read history (but not English so didn’t care that much) know only that Henry had a young son who no one (who’s not a history nut) knows about who reigned fairly briefly before Mary took the throne.

    5. .Tom

      > The western political elite, used to giving orders rather than taking them

      Many of them seem more than ready to take direction from Washington.

    6. zach

      I oppose things I’m not intellectually equipped to understand, all the time.

      Like, just this morning, I got out of bed, I opposed gravity and comfort by changing my position in space from supine and blanketed to upright and kinda chilly.

      Easy peasy.

  19. hoki_haya

    Drones are indeed standard procedure as the vanguard, no advanced military secret there, and have been employed in that capacity in regional conflicts for years. Armenia, for example, had no answer for the waves of Azeri drones, shipped from Turkey, made in Israel, and lost over half of its territory in 2020 and then all of Artsakh in 2023.

  20. Raymond Sim

    Listening to Ted Postol describe the clever trick of orbital mechanics Oreshnik likely employs, I realized my stepfather had described something similar to me back in the late seventies or early eighties, in connection with the likely functioning of the MIRV’d Soviet intermediate range ballistic missile then being deployed.

    He thought this was likely a better solution than the terrain-reading radar the US Pershing II employed (He had some involvement in that project.). He also thought it would make notions of intercepting the warheads hopeless (He spent much of the seventies working on various predecessors to Reagan’s Star Wars.).

    I mention this because it makes me think that Oreshnik, like the other Russian superweapons we’ve seen deployed so far, is probably the result of an extended period of development, perhaps having been taken off and put back on the shelf multiple times.

    Since the onset of the pandemic I’ve been struck by how low-information supposed subject matter experts in the west often are. The apparent bewilderment at Russian and Iranian technical developments strikes me as a particularly startling example of this. “Experts” who get caught flatfooted by stuff my stepdad, a humble grunt of electronic engineering, was talking about 45 years ago?

    1. Robert Hahl

      Our experts also failed to see the end of the USSR coming. That reminds me of the famous quote about how western bankers are happy to be ruined if it comes at the same time and in the same way as their contemporaries, because rightly standing apart from the herd is riskier than being wrong along with everyone else.

      1. Lefty Godot

        And Jake Sullivan was bragging about how the Middle East was more peaceful than it had been in decades right before October 7th, 2023. These people are experts in their own minds among members of their usual cocktail party circuit. Stupidity, conformity, and ability to fail upward dominate the personnel requirements for our alleged leaders.

    2. redleg

      Postol described how the flat trajectory increases range by skipping off the top of the atmosphere like skipping a stone on a pond.
      Postol also described that MIRV would hit the target in a line, which was what was observed to a degree.
      Ritter and the 7* guy referenced above explain that what impacted wasn’t MIRV, but separate rockets that add velocity and independently maneuver. These release 6 sub-munitions each. How independently targetable these sub-munitions are is not yet known AFAIK.

      Rocket bus -> 6 sub-rockets -> 6 sub-munitions each

      1. Raymond Sim

        My impression is that the submunitions were lofted on the convergent trajectories, thus producing the very steep descent.

        So, six “minibuses” lofting six projectiles each. That’s a lot being asked of the minibuses, but they each get six great big shots at their target. For a target like Yuzhmash (or an airbase) misses with such weapons can still be hits, so it works out.

      2. Polar Socialist

        If MIRV means “multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle”, then it definitely was MIRV. I don’t think the 6 sub-munitions in each MIRV are independently targeted, though. They just make up for the inherent inaccuracy* of a hypersonic warhead by covering a bigger area. If the payload of 6 kinetic blocks destroys everything within 200 meters, CEP of 100 meters is fine.

        * inside the plasma-mantle it’s basically blind and has very little control anyway. Also noteworthy is that the plasma doesn’t make the warhead invisible to radar, AFAIK, but it does make the return signals behave in ways that make it impossible to lock a fire-control radar. Chinese, I believe, are leading the signal processing research to mathematically correct/analyse the echoes so that they make sense.

          1. Polar Socialist

            What can I say? I did listen Postol with Nima, and he uses the word “submunition”, which as independently targeted is also called MIRV. The Arms Control Wonks call them MIRV. Wikipedia calls them MIRV (first combat use). Putin himself says it a “high-precision weapon” which a MRV (submunition dispersal) wouldn’t be.

            Postol also seem to be the only one who thinks it was launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. And not Kapustin Yar, Russia.

            I’m not saying my guess is any better, or even nowhere near equal to what experts can get out of a few grainy frames. I’m just saying that to me it looks like six intentionally targeted (to cover the large industrial complex and only the large industrial complex) entry vehicles each releasing six non-targeted submunitions.

            1. Captain Obvious

              I did not listen to those (because I don’t have that much spare time), but one does not need to in order to understand basic stuff. It’s not up to anyone on the Internet to arbitrarily (re)define basic terminology. RV literally means reentry vehicle (not to be confused with recreational vehicle). Reentry refers to re-entering the atmosphere (after going out of it). Vehicle means that it is carying some payload. Oreshnik must have some kind of RV, just like all weapons of it’s kind.

              “M” just means multiple, in order to differentiate from single reentry vehicle systems. If those 6 warheads enter atmosphere separately, then we have multiple RVs.

              “I” part means that each RV can be independently targeted (to some extent, because physics).

              Submunitions is general term used in context of cluster warheads. Whatever a cluster warhead holds in, is submunition.

              I’m just saying that to me it looks like six intentionally targeted (to cover the large industrial complex and only the large industrial complex) entry vehicles each releasing six non-targeted submunitions.

              Yup.

      3. Yves Smith Post author

        Thanks for mentioning Ritter. I didn’t have time to properly cite or summarize his logic as to why the Oreshink wasn’t a MIRV and appreciate you sourcing him and Postol for that.

  21. Robert Hahl

    re: “…US and NATO planners vested their hopes in [the] idea that Russia[n] troops would run away when they encountered Western weapons.”

    Ritter once described computerized battle simulations he used to plan an attack in the first Gulf war. He said that one could predict a victory for any plan simply by dialing down the coeficient of enemy moral, or willingness to fight. My guess is the planners of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive saw that the computer was predicting a big L, and felt compelled to believe that the Russians would turn and run, or else the whole operation would have to be scrubbed because the computer was predicting failure.

    1. Aurelien

      I was at a presentation after the War, when the analysts said that they had modelled the likely fighting, with a relatively small allowance for human factors. All simulations predicted substantial Coalition casualties based essentially on equipment characteristics. The only way they could reproduce the actual result, they said, was by dealing down Iraqi motivation to fight to almost nothing. This was actually consistent with what we later discovered: the Iraqi Army was not allowed to act without orders. Receiving no orders, it did nothing. The results were never published, because of fear that they would be seen to be “racist.” That said, I think the West had convinced itself in 2023 that the Russians would turn and run, either for historical reasons of ethnic superiority, or because believing anything else would suggest the game was up.

      1. hk

        The notion that “Russians would turn and run” seems to be the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. Russians may be and do many things, but turning and running is something that Russian soldiers have practically never done in their long history. Where the heck do these people get ideas like that?

        1. Polar Socialist

          For a few millennia it has been well known that the barbarians of Turan (or Jungle) will yield before the just wrath of the nobles of Iran (or Garden).

          Or, to shamelessly mix pop culture quotes: “You best start believing in myths, Miss Turner… It’s our only hope!”

        2. sarmaT

          Where the heck do these people get ideas like that?

          In Kharkov, Kherson, Kiev 2022. They thought that Rooskies just turned away and ran from the mighty NATO proxy unstoppable force. At that time, they were all planning summer holiday in Crimea in 2023.

  22. Socal Rhino

    I saw a clip of an intelligence analyst who said we are clearly on an escalation ladder with Russia, and every time that has been wargamed it has ended with nuclear war.

    This was on Fox but I think it was notable for being aired on a network, not a YouTube or Rumble channel.

    Ray McGovern said on Judge Nap today that he thinks Austin was cut out of the loop on this recent escalation. Perhaps saner minds are trying for influence.

    1. ilsm

      Central Europe is no place to have a war, nuclear tripwire!

      WRT Ukraine Obama seemed to know this, Trump expressed this in the debate with Harris.

      Why Biden and Harris seem to not is troubling.

      The bet in early 1980s was “X days to nukes” over Fulda Gap….

  24. If At First you don't Succeed, Post Again

    Try 2:

    Honestly, it is too bad that this comment of your isn’t getting enough attention:

    The West ought to be reacting to the Oreshnik the same way the US did to the 1957 Sputnik launch: that it demonstrated that the US was seriously behind the USSR in key areas of expertise. There was a panicked acceleration of space-related spending as well as a broader push to increase math and sciences education.

    I cannot fathom how we got to this point, but somehow the answer to every achievement of any other country (Russia, China, Iran, etc.) is to just downplay it, ridicule it, and carry on as if nothing has changed. To me, this mentality is far more alarming and destructive than any newly-introduced missile system, no matter how potent.

    Compare this to what the US did after Sputnik occurred, which was not only to accelerate STEM, but also to create agencies such as DARPA, whose entire raison d’etre was to “prevent another episode of strategic surprise”

    “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.” (Richard Feynman)

    1. Yves Smith Post author

      I appreciate your comment but…..

      Please DO NOT EVER double post!!! I don’t see your first comment, but double posting trains our software to see you as a spammer. We get thousands of spam posts a day and can’t, and therefore don’t, review it to hoist bona fide comments.

      So please be patient if your comment goes into moderation. Many of our highly valued regulars have this happen often to them. This sadly is the result of having to add more mod triggers as a result of election and other cray cray.

      1. The PostMan always Writes Twice

        Hi Yves,

        I should have responded earlier. I don’t know if you ever try to post under a non-admin account to test your system, but sometimes when I post, your webpage “resets”. By this, I don’t see my post and a message saying that “Your comment awaits moderation” or anything like that–I mean that it looks like I have just not posted anything at all. I think this seems to happen more often if I begin or end a post with italicized words.

        From my best understanding so far (and I haven’t spent a lot of time trying to figure this out), these posts are not being filtered or awaiting moderation–they simply disappear into the ether (or aether–your pick).

        This is what happened when I “Reposted” yesterday, and so I am not surprised that you didn’t see the original.

        Just FWIW.

        1. Yves Smith Post author

          I will send this on to our tech guy. Even Lambert and I sometimes have comments not appear. This might be a clue.

          Sorry for chewing you out under false premises. And please use the same handle. You earn troll points with our moderators otherwise and our mod software does not like that either.

  25. ISL

    I decided to check the link for 2 – that the US has successfully tested a hypersonic, which my understanding is that it had successfully tested the launch.

    The citation is missing.

    I have not seen statements from US DOD of successful testing of targetability. All ICBMs, for example, are hypersonic ballistic missiles – its maneuverability that’s key (and dealing with the plasma). I assume if there was such a success it would be announced clearly – but instead its just announced that it was launched.

    https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/moments-before-donald-trump-declares-victory-us-conducts-hypersonic-missile-test-6956925

    Additionally, the deployment to Guam was of a hypersonic-like weapon to familiarize troops! Uh-huh.

  27. Maxwell Johnston

    I visited the Yuzhmash plant in 1993, when visiting Dnepropetrovsk on business (now Dnipro, but probably will revert to Dnepropetrovsk within the next few years). It is (was?) a huge sprawling Soviet facility. If the reports of its total destruction by a single non-nuclear missile are true, that’s remarkable.

    Military aspects aside, I think the real significance of this strike on Yuzhmash is that the Russians are finally taking their gloves off. One of the reasons for Russia’s relative restraint in this conflict has been their desire to limit damage to key UKR infrastructure. There are plenty of tasty morsels in UKR that well-connected Russian oligarchs would love to get their hands on, and Yuzhmash is (was?) quite possibly the crown jewel of UKR industry. Putin’s decision to take it out sends a message that Russia will fight to the bitter end, even if it means laying waste to all of UKR. It reminds me of the British sinking of the French fleet in 1940; from that point onwards, the Germans knew that the British truly intended to fight it out:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Mers-el-K%C3%A9bir

  28. T Martin

    Interesting on how an article can generate random thoughts: 1) If an effective weapon, then Star Wars redux in reverse as the US borrows, steals, or prints more money to keep up with Russian technology. 2) Considering that WW III is in progress, if this weapon is effective, is it not difficult to imagine that it will find its way to countries that have security & defense alliances with Russia,, e.g. Iran, North Korea, & China! Note: Russia and Iran are ‘deepening’ their ties, (recently announced) and the US/ NATO via Ukraine wants to target NK troops and Russia itself. etc. 3) The US seems to lack the imagination to consider that proxies can be used against the US. Consider how many US targets would be in range in West Asia. Israel must be considering how effective THAAD will be against this weapon. The Houthis must be itching to get their hands on a few of these devices. 4) The US military establishment is mired in habitual procurement ways. Re: John Boyd, Fighter Pilot who changed the Art of War. 5) English military analysts have continually been forecasting that Russia ran out of missiles over the past two years. A new one how can this be?

  29. Fastball

    I was recently treated to some wise guy opining that because nuclear weapons need tritium to operate and because Russia’s tritium supply was in Ukraine, he’s not afraid of the Russians launching a nuclear strike.

    These yahoos are gambling with all of our lives and getting away with it. They need to be called on it — “warmonger, you’re gambling all of our lives on your iffy prognostications”

  30. Rabbit

    Russia has been very adept at technology for some time. The best tank in WW2 The Czar bomb. Closed cycle rocket engines the US thought impossible. They had it for 20 years before the US knew it existed. US space missions ran off of surplus USSR engines for years.The first satellite. Their attempt to gang many engines failed but Musk took it up along with the closed cycle engine. The first man in space.
    Russia is building the first commercial jet with 100% of parts made in the same country. Every nut, bolt and chip.
    Russia didn’t tear down old factories (like the US). Reopened and upgraded with probably Chinese CNC they’re running 24/7.
    Russian defense is almost wholly owned by the government. Contractors have limits on profits.
    Russia graduates twice as many STEM students per capita.
    Russia has schools devoted to specific defense research (i.e. they have a Rocket school).
    They do what’s needed: Concentrate on defense not profit.
    I recon they spend 1/8 the amount the US does (PPP) and their weapons work.

  31. RabbiT (cue fanfare)

    I amend that to the only commercial jet presently made. Before outsourcing probably most were made in country.

  32. skippy

    Nice to see Millennium7 mentioned as it does a nice job of unpacking military tech sans any ideological notions. That said, for me, upon seeing the – staggered – 6 warheads [total of 36] enveloped in plasma was epic, physics are just nuts. Depending on the composition of the war head and heat of its plasma, combined with it weight [could be very heavy for size/mass thingy] and how that reacts with what it touches at those speeds. Atmospheric shock wave, thermal shock wave, and Geo shock waves.

    Best bit is this was done without serious damage to its surrounds via air-frame launched attacks with HE since WWII.

    A site like Yuzhmash is just full of very sensitive tech i.e. what is not obliterated is fried or seriously in-op. This is stuff you cant just pop on line and have next day delivery. Same goes for all the heavy equipment use to move heavy stuff around.

    Maybe BlackRock can T up a deal with Boeing, get things back up and running in say 10 years and billions of dollars – smirk …

    PS … Imagine Iran with something like this ….

  33. Bill Malcolm

    People need to think about the principle of conservation of energy. Whatever energy struck the ground in that Oreshnik attack cannot be more than the total energy imparted to the projectiles by the rocket fuel expended in the various rocket motors. Plus the energy of the explosives the projectiles carried.

    Unless the Russians have conjured free energy out of thin air, some of the notions I’ve read here make zero sense.

    So for anyone to stand up and call this a mini nuclear explosion equivalent is a bit silly.

    If anyone with a minor technical clue thinks about it for just a minute, they’ll get what I’m saying. X amount of chemical energy from fuel and explosives was available at launch. Some of this energy was dissipated in air friction during the flight, so X minus some percentage hit the ground.

    Certainly, one can calculate this and that and observe the truism that velocity squared is a term in kinetic energy. But hanging over all this speculation remains this tested Law, and I quote from an undisputed Wikipedia article:

    “In physics and chemistry, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system remains constant; it is said to be conserved over time. This law, first proposed and tested by Émilie du Châtelet, means that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another.”

    So can we get some considered thought on Orestnik, please? Haven’t read anything on this so far, and I’ve listened through two complete Ted Postol interviews. Ritter and the rest aren’t scientists.

    1. redleg

      This weapon hits its target like a hammer, not an explosion. The shock waves and vibration would crush/smash the target. There shouldn’t be explosions, maybe secondary ones, but the area would be smashed to bits.

      1. Polar Socialist

        Martyanov is saying the local allegedly claim it felt like an earthquake, not as a series of explosions. Also, allegedly, Ukrainian security officials have cordoned off the whole industrial site, and all camera are taken away at entry points.

        Allegedly the top four underground floors have been mostly destroyed, and the rescue workers have not yet been able to reach the lower levels of the complex.

        1. begob

          Surprised nobody has produced Richter Scale data to argue the toss over the force of the impacts. Last month the western media was full of headlines over the ‘earthquake’ effect of the arms dump detonation west of Moscow. (And I’m still curious as to how that attack happened.)

    2. Grebo

      KE=0.5mv^2
      0.5 x 100kg x 3300m/s x 3300m/s = 544,500,000J per warhead
      That’s about 60kg of tritonal or 1/7 of a Mark 84 bomb.

      36 of them would be equivalent to 5 Mark 84 bombs, assuming they were inert lumps of something and not explosive. Israel used 80 to kill Nasrallah (and many others) merely 18m underground.

      So not like a nuke, but that is its point. It can penetrate and destroy a deep bunker, without levelling the neighbourhood, from 2000km away, in 10 minutes, with no hope of stopping it. Stick that up your Storm Shadow.

      1. redleg

        The explosive disperses energy in 3 dimensions. Kinetic munitions apply that energy to a point, and conservation of momentum means that the projectile doesn’t need to penetrate to cause enormous damage. It can smack a structure and cause spalling on the other side that is just as destructive as if the warhead went straight through.
        I wonder how big of a sandbag revetment would be necessary to stop a (say) 75kg bullet traveling at 3km/s? I’ll bet it’s a lot of f’n sand.

        When looking at a bomb, the mass of the bomb is inclusive of all components. The bursting charge is a fraction of that depending on the device. An armor piercing round has a relatively small charge, if it has one at all, compared to an HE round. The Navy calls HE shells and bombs “high capacity” for this reason.

        1. Grebo

          Yes, I mean the Oreshnik has equivalent energy to 5 Mark 84s, not the same effect. I would expect the impactor to transfer more of its energy to the target than an explosion on or near the surface. The Israelis used so many bombs because they had to dig a hole first, essentially. The Oreshnik will just punch straight through the soft ground and shatter the bunker below.

          The 2000lb Mark 84 has 946lb of explosive.

          1. redleg

            Funny, to me anyway, that after all the years of doing artillery and even today having the various shell-fuse combination weights in my memory, I have no idea what the bursting charge of any of them are.

      1. Bill Malcolm

        I am but a lowly physicist and engineer. If you are able to refute my analysis with something approaching logic, have at it. So far as I can see, people here would rather invoke something approaching magic.

        If the Oreshnik blew up on its launchpad, both rocket fuel and explosives all at once, how big a bang would that be, do you think? Would the Baikonur Cosmodrome disappear? That energy is the total available for when the missile(s) hit. Do you dispute that? No more energy is added during flight. Agreed?

        All that this Oreshnik has done is transfer the kinetic energy of its moving parts into the target as an impulse(s). Then presumably, add explosives’ energy to that nastiness. Of course the damage will be severe locally. But it’s not going to spread over acres and acres from the points of impact. The plant covers thousands of acres. And all you lot are trying to tell me is I got the law of conservation of energy incorrect, and some faff about Newton and his apple.

        Over and out.

        1. skippy

          @Bill,

          Your leaving out so many factors whilst being blinkered by a simple[tm] physics law. These warheads are of unknown materials and moving faster than terminal velocity. On the last I noted above they are shrouded in a plasma field and that changes things a whole bunch. Not only velocity but, how it effects everything on impact.

          Then you have six groups of six coming down in succession/waves. That would have a very interesting effect on everything effected by impact. Were talking meteor dynamics/physics here mate. Until someone has evidence of the impact craters its all fun and games but, I am leaning to some very interesting results and the West just pi**ed its pants a wee bit.

          1. Arkady Bogdanov

            Yes, this. Consider what a 100 watt lightbulb will do vs a 100 watt laser. Same exact energy- but the form of the energy and focus of the release is what matters. The energy is in the form of an object that, via metallurgy retains its own form, thus penetrates the ground further, and also focuses the release of the energy in one direction, instead of all directions.
            Look at this this way- normally an explosion radiates outward roughly equally in a sphere. If that energy were instead focused into an area that is say, 1% of the sphere onto a target in that 1% area, to achieve the same level of penetration with an explosion, you would need an explosion roughly 100 times larger, because it lacks the focus. (And I say roughly because I do understand that the act of focusing the energy consumes some of the energy and there are losses due to friction on reentry, but I am not interested in that level of computational accuracy- as opposed to the concept). Concept is similar to a shaped charge- but with even greater focus and energy.

    4. JM

      I did some fairly simple calculations on just the kinetic energy release by dummy MIRV’s travelling at Mach11. If each MIRV weighed 100kg of say tungsten encased steel alloy, that would release up to 150kg of TNT equivalent. If the missile was based around the RS26, that had a payload of ~800kg. So 1200kg of TNT total.

    5. Yves Smith Post author

      See comments above, There were almost certainly no explosives. At +Mach 10 impact speed, the kinetic energy per lb markedly exceeds what any explosive of the same weight could do, and you have to add fussy stuff that will make heat shielding much harder to set off explosives.

  34. Paul Greenwood

    I am somewhat confused by a statement suggesting US submarines are superior to Russian without even saying whether that refers to SSN or SSBN or both. Quite why US vessels should be better eludes me. Some say British Astute class are superior to Virginia class, but…….

    As for SCALP it is Storm Shadow which Britain wants rid of so it can buy Rampage from Israel. SCALP was the naval vertical launch missile that embarrassed France when misfired against Syria

    As for F35 it is now suffering engine burnout and lack of cooling for its electronics – it seems US decided to seize control of NATO air forces by leading software platforms with variable permissions innplscevof a hardware solution

    This is all facile. Why does NATO need to fight anyone ? For the first time in my life I think the Bjndeswehr should be disbanded and Britain and France should give up nuclear submarines. It is pointless wasting money when US needs to outspend everyone – and U.K. nuclear deterrent is leased from US snd based in King‘s Bay, GA

    US will never have as many troops as in 1970s in Europe as do many would die crossing the Atlantic. What is funny is that renaming US bases does not change the fact that Fort Hood cannot protect the Texas border.

    1. sarmaT

      US submarines are superior to Russian, as much as Western tanks are superior to Russian ones. Up until recently, everyone (including many very pro-Russian people) had lots of respect for western tanks (Leopard, Abrams, Challenger, you name it). They all looked very good on paper, and on training grounds, and in wars against weak opponents. I hope we never get to see how good US submarines really are.

      1. Polar Socialist

        When the Akula (project 971) became know to the US Navy around 1989, they allegedly admitted it was the best nuclear sub in service at the time. In 2012 one patrolled undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for over a month.

        Also, the youtube channel @jiveturkeylive, run by an ex US Navy submariner, seems to hold Soviet/Russian design in high value. They had already in the 1970’s a level of automation that US still trying to achieve.

        I think that when people like Martyanov compliment US submarines, they mean it in the sense that as a branch US submarine fleet has not fallen nearly as much as the rest of the US military. They still have a concept of operations, know their purpose and have competent commanders. Even if the Navy does it’s best to clog up the logistics and maintenance.

        1. sarmaT

          I know about jiveturkey. Having respect for the opponent is one of the things that distinguishes an expert from a hack. There is no doubt that US submarines are top-shelf-stuff, and Martyanov says that, just like everyone else. On the other hand, Soviet/Russian submarines have always been state-of-the-art too, and western experts (should) acknowledge that. At that point, any claim of superiority would have to be proven in real life, like we had with tanks, and no one wants that (except maybe Lindsey Graham, and that walrus guy).

  36. Bazarov

    A great piece and a great discussion in the comments.

    I don’t have anything to add vis-a-vis Oreshnik’s technical capabilities.

    I do, however, wish to contribute regarding Oreshnik’s strategic importance. My initial sense is that this weapon is not as significant as Sputnik. Rather, Oreshnik serves to increases Russia’s already-extant conventional dominance over NATO. From my reading of history, this dominance goes back to the Cold War.

    It was clear to NATO planners then (perhaps Aurelien can correct me if I’m wrong on this point) that the Russians would totally annihilate NATO’s conventional forces in Europe. At the most, from what I understand, NATO hoped to slow the Russians down long enough that American reinforcements could arrive and perhaps have a fighting chance.

    However, NATO viewed itself as a big, big underdog vs. the Soviet juggernaut, which was why there was talk in the Reagan Pentagon about “winning a nuclear war”–it was pretty clear that an open conflict between NATO and the Soviets would escalate to a nuclear exchange.

    I’m starting to hear language from the US brass that echoes such Cold War thinking. Here I’m thinking specifically of Admiral Buchanan’s recent comment: “We must have reserve [nuke] capacity. You wouldn’t use up all your resources to win because then you’d have nothing left to deter future threats.” This openly states that, you know, US planners think NATO will win the first nuclear war (presumably against Russia!)–therefore we gotta make sure we’ve got enough ammunition to win the second one (presumably against China?) too!

    The American/NATO position remains more or less the same as it was during the Cold War: Russian conventional dominance, NATO reliance on nuclear brinkmanship. Oreshnik reinforces this dynamic.

    1. John k

      I don’t see any evidence that this is us or western thinking since Russia was down and out in the 90’s. It seems more, ‘just a gas station with nukes’, or ‘if the fighting gets tough they’ll run away’.
      Even now they talk about stalemate, negotiations and similar bs.
      The sooner ukr surrenders the fewer ukr lives are lost and less infra and other suffering. Imagine no power, or maybe 4 hours/day. Brutally cold, maybe no water/sewage/food distribution. The refugees are coming to western eu.
      And certainly Biden wants no surrender at least until trump is pres.
      I’m wondering if Russia is pissed enough to say no attacks on Baghdad or Beirut.

  37. David in Friday Harbor

    I think that the “Sputnik Moment” analogy is the important take-away here, not rank speculation on technical detail. The Russian government were wise to demonstrate their “new” weapon. It will send the collective west into a tizzy, just like Sputnik did. Maybe they’ll demonstrate it next on the Aegis Ashore batteries in Poland and Romania.

    What can the U.S. do? Certainly not launch nukes. How can new weapons be developed, let alone produced, by America’s hollowed-out-if-not-downright-destroyed industrial base? Will India and China continue to provide the scientific labor and key components? Not bloody likely. The BRICS will turn their backs on an economy expressly geared to make war on them.

    The real issue is what might happen to the U.S. economy if the Pentagon and the Military-Financial Complex are let loose to loot the country in another effort to “catch up with the Russians” (I say Financial because the problem is that there is no more “industrial” left after total financialization). The general population will be reduced to further penury.

    The Biden voters who failed to show up for Harris will be but a drop in the bucket compared to the angry mob that will arise after a few years of stripping the last shreds of meat from the economy to feed the maw of the Oreshnik panic. America is already looking a lot like “Ukraine,” lurching from Color Revolution to Color Revolution while the looting continues unabated.

    1. Glen

      Thanks David. My thoughts too. It will be “The CHIPS Act” on crack cocaine meets meth addict MIC.

      Much smarter to just take American CEOs, Wall St bankers, and MBAs and air drop them on Russia and China and hope they [family blog] up their economies as much as they have ours.

  38. Wisker

    I think people are getting carried away by the energy math. How the energy is distributed matters as much as the impressive joules number.

    These are probably long narrow rods–they impart most of that energy straight down. Devastating in select circumstances, but not remotely equivalent to an explosive force distributing energy and shrapnel in a roughly spherical volume.

    A bomb that fuzes on the ground will damage everything around it, if one of these hits the ground it’s not doing much but digging a deep hole.

    One could presumably attach other warheads with different effects, although I’m not sure how practical that would be given the delivery speed.

  39. AG

    re: kinetic impact weapon in sci-fi film

    Anybody remember the odd sci-fi action flick, over-produced, under-developed: “G.I. Joe – Retaliation” (2013) –
    villain Jonathan Pryce there threatend to destroy Earth with this:
    kinetic orbital strike
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

    “A kinetic bombardment or a kinetic orbital strike is the hypothetical act of attacking a planetary surface with an inert kinetic projectile from orbit (orbital bombardment), where the destructive power comes from the kinetic energy of the projectile impacting at very high speeds. The concept originated during the Cold War.
    Typical depictions of the tactic are of a satellite containing a magazine of tungsten rods and a directional thrust system.”

    In the movie it´s made of tungsten.
    Don´t worry, Dwayne Johnson saves the day – no impact weapon hits Earth.
    I had forgotten about it though it had been one of the few memorable details along some martial arts and costumes (pre-Deadpool). This time we can´t blame Hollywood. They had warned us.

  40. AG

    Don´t know what to make of this by Pavel Podvig (UN-expert for reducing nukes) on TWITTER:

    “Oh, no, the window of vulnerability is back: “Sarmat … can carry a large number of nuclear warheads designed to attack American ICBMs in a first-strike scenario.” It wasn’t there the first time around, of course. Even less so now. (Not to mention that Sarmat is years away)”

    With this he mocks a new FOREIGN AFFAIRS piece:
    (paywalled)
    Deterring the Nuclear Dictators
    To Confront China, Russia, and North Korea, Trump Should Forgo a Review and Speed Up the Arsenal’s Modernization
    By Madelyn Creedon and Franklin Miller
    November 20, 2024
    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/deterring-nuclear-dictators

    p.s. Podvig commented on 25th. The original Tweet was Nov. 23rd. But the FA piece was from 20th – written well before “Oreshnik” .

    CV Podvig
    Senior Researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and a researcher with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. Pavel Podvig started his work on arms control at the Center for Arms Control Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT)
    https://russianforces.org/podvig/about/

    1. jobs

      Annie Jacobsen also mentions Podvig a number of times in “Nuclear War”. He is quoted as saying, “Tundra is not great”, Tundra being the supposedly inferior version of SBIRS, the US infrared rocket exhaust detection system. In the book, Tundra plays a role in the Russians fatefully misinterpreting what is happening, leading to the book’s title.

  41. Sadness

    The RF was never going to lose the Ukraine war, ie my lack of interest in it. The US/West must have known this. Therefore the supposition that win and lose there’s money in it. The money is everywhere from forever ago, win here lose there, sweet. This is the history of man. Create division make conflict & your place here or your place there the money rolls in.
    This the sadness of bending minds to your will and owning the place, ask ‘religions’ how it’s done.
    Party on the most destructive of species, especially when it knows what it’s doing 🥳🤑

  43. jrkrideau

    The Russian Federation is separated from the United States of America by about 3 to 5 kilometres of cold water.

    If we look at the Russian Far East, suddenly a lot of US bases, US territory, and US allies are within range of an Oreshnik missile. My crude calculation, a couple of days ago, suggested that an Oreshnik could hit any place in Alaska, much of British Columbia and perhaps Seattle. It looked like Tokyo, Seoul and Manila and all the US bases in that area of the Western Pacific are in easy range. Oh and Guam.

    Col. Jacques Baud talk on Nima’s channel[1] suggests my estimate was a bit conservative. The map he presented includes Washington State, Oregon, most or all of Idaho and a chunk of Northern California. I would trust Col. Baud’s estimate more than mine.

    1. Which I forgot to bookmark.

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