How Russian Stormbringer Nuclear Cruise Missile Can Help Bankrupt US War Machine
Sputnik
President Putin has confirmed the successful testing of the “Burevestnik” ("Stormbringer"), a Russian nuclear-powered, nuclear-capable cruise missile unlike anything that exists in any other nation’s arsenal. What do we know about the weapon? What impact will it have on the global strategic balance? Sputnik reached out to a top expert to find out.
“The latest successful test of the Burevestnik, a global-range cruise missile with a nuclear propulsion system, has been carried out,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told attendees of the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi on Thursday.
"Today, we have almost wrapped up work on the modern types of strategic weapons which I announced and spoke about several years ago," Putin said, referring his March 2018 speech to lawmakers, during which the president unveiled the Burevestnik and other new strategic weapons designed to ensure global strategic stability amid US moves to surround Russia with missile defenses with offensive capabilities, and Pentagon planning aimed at neutralizing the Russian nuclear deterrent.
What Prompted the Burevestnik's Development?
Developed alongside other advanced strategic weapons, including the Poseidon nuclear-powered torpedo, the Avangard hypersonic boost-glide vehicle, the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, the Kinzhal air-launched hypersonic quasi-ballistic missile, and the Peresvet laser complex, the Burevestnik is one component of Russia’s multilayered response to the George W. Bush administration’s decision in 2002 to walk out on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Washington’s short-sighted decision prompted Russia to dust off blueprints and prototypes of advanced rocketry and aerospace systems and designs developed in strict secrecy throughout the second half of the 20th century until the end of the Cold War. In the case of the Burevestnik, this involved following in the footsteps of a path forged by the Voronezh-based Chemical Automatics Design Bureau to build a nuclear thermal rocket engine using a liquid hydrogen propellant.
The concept of a nuclear-powered engine was born in the late 1940s, at the very dawning of the Soviet rocketry and nuclear programs, with legendary rocket scientist Vitaly Ievlev receiving support from Igor Kurchatov, father of the Soviet atomic bomb, and rocket scientists Sergey Korolev and Mstislav Keldysh, to carry out theoretical work to create such an engine. While work on the program initially focused exclusively on potential military applications, the state soon also realized the tremendous potential of the concept of a nuclear-powered engine being used by spacecraft to make long-distance journeys across the solar system, including to Mars.
“What this will give Russia a capacity for is to take a low-wielding potentially nuclear weapon and then use it to have it travel a greater distance, tens of thousands of miles,” retired US Army Major Mike Lyons told US media Thursday, several hours after Putin’s Valdai speech.
In 2020, then-UK Chief of Defense Intelligence Lt. Gen. Jim Hockenhull warned that the Burevestnik has what is effectively a “global reach and would allow attack from unexpected directions,” giving Moscow a weapon with a “near infinite loiter time.” Combined with the capabilities of the Poseidon, this would “allow the Russians to hold the UK and its allies’ civilian and military infrastructure at risk of both direct attack both with conventional explosives and nuclear weapons, limiting options or raising the stakes during times of crisis,” Hockenhull said.
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