The (non-radioactive) fallout from last week’s “Oreshnik” strike on the giant, sprawling Yuzhmash plant in Dniepropetrovsk is still working its way through the collective West’s rather constipated intellectual systems. In public, Western officials are saying all sorts of frankly insane things. For example, a Dutch non-entity named Admiral Rob Bauer talked about the need for NATO to be ready to launch pre-emptive strikes against Russia, just this week:
This is not merely stupid. It is literally INSANE. What the Russians accomplished a week ago with that kinetic hypersonic missile strike against Dniepropetrovsk, has operational and strategic ramifications that fundamentally shift the entire security framework of Europe and the USA.
That is not hyperbole or exaggeration. The successful combat-test of “Oreshnik” completely shifts the way we have to think about stand-off strike weapons and pre-emptive strikes, in the context of the European theatre. This does not require advanced degrees in mathematics to figure out – it simply lacks the one commodity that appears to be sorely lacking in the West these days:
An ounce or two of COMMON SENSE.
What Exactly IS “Oreshnik”?
The reason why we now see a fundamental change in the security architecture of Europe (and the USA), is because of the nature of this new weapon. For better or worse, though, we know very little about what this new weapon actually is.
There is all manner of guesswork happening across TEH INNARWEBZ about what exactly this thing is. One of the most sensible voices on the subject is Prof. Theodore Postol of MIT, who is Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security at that (once-)august institution.
Prof. Postol is a strident critic of the American approach to missile defence. The Military-Media-Industrial-Congressional-Complex (MMICC) has said for many years that he does not know what he is talking about. The dismal performance of the PATRIOT PAC-3 and THAAD systems in Ukraine and Israel, against the latest and most advanced supersonic and hypersonic missile technologies, rather indicate that he knows quite well what he is talking about.
Based on the data available, Prof. Postol concludes that the “Oreshnik” involves the use of hypersonic glide-boost vehicles. Here he is on Daniel Davis / Deep Dive, explaining why he thinks this:
And here he is with Nima Alkhorsid on Dialogue Works, expanding a bit on his previous analysis, using video that Nima shows him:
The precise nature of a hypersonic glide-boost vehicle is, as far as I can tell, partly hype, partly fact, but here is a reasonably concise explanation that more or less seems to get it right – though it is quite old, relatively speaking:
The reason I disparage it as “old”, is because this video was made WELL before the Russians demonstrated the effectiveness and capabilities of their own air-breathing and ballistic hypersonic missiles, and of their RS-28 Sarmat with the Avangard glide vehicle, and before they showed conclusively just how poorly the US’s most vaunted air defence systems perform. Today, many of the criticisms of hypersonic glide vehicles, no longer really apply – we have seen them work in combat, and they really are absolutely lethal.
There is an alternative argument, though. One of my favourite recently discovered YouTube channels is Millennium 7* HistoryTech, created and run by a really-for-real engineer, who discusses planes, rockets, and other Big Boyz Toyz with a great accent and a true understanding of the engineering involved.
His take on the “Oreshnik” is that it is similar to your typical ICBM, except shorter-ranged and with more manoeuvring capabilities, and loaded up with Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs) which themselves contain multiple kinetic penetrator munitions:
While his view on what, exactly, the “Oreshnik” actually IS, differ somewhat from Prof. Postol’s, they both agree on the implications:
This thing really is a game-changer.
No Hype, Just Hypersonics
We have seen lots of things being called “game-changers” over the course of the 404 War. Every single one of them – from the Western side – has fallen flat. Not one has actually worked out that way.
On the Russian side, we have seen plenty of innovations that really have fundamentally altered the face of modern warfare. The first combat use of the R-37M missile at extreme ranges, for instance, by a Su-57, marked the first true 5th-generation fighter engagement in history against a peer adversary. The use of drone warfare and countermeasures is another.
The Russians have made true innovations in fortifications, urban assault tactics, artillery coordination, and countless other such things, at a speed and frequency that, if you actually look at it, is really astonishing.
But nothing has quite fundamentally changed the picture on the ground, the way “Oreshnik” has.
To understand why, we have to understand a little something about how the Russians think on the subject of nuclear war. And for that, we can turn to DA KERNEL HIZZSELF, who explains how and why first Soviet and then Russian military thinkers turned against the idea of using nuclear weapons on the battlefield:
Col. Douglas Macgregor does tend to put rather too much weight on the works of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, who admitted that his own Gulag Archipelagowas an artistic projection, as it were, of the horrors of the gulags, not a fact-based account. (The notion that the Soviets killed 60 million of their own people, under Stalin, is rather far-fetched, in my view – I think the number is closer to around 35 million, including the death toll of 27 million from the Great Patriotic War.) But he is quite correct about how the Russian General Staff views nuclear weapons.
In simple terms, the Russians really do not like nukes, because they know full well what nuclear weapons entail – the literal poisoning of the land. And that is not what Russians want. They are a sober and serious-minded people, who understand the true horror and atrocity of war – they have been studying and practicing warfare for quite literally A THOUSAND YEARS. The Russian General Staff is not keen to use them, unless there is literally absolutely no other option.
So the Russian General Staff and senior Russian leadership have been looking at and exploring, for years, the possibilities of non-nuclear weapons that have the same range and hit with the same kind of force. The best way to do that, is with ground penetrators that hit at hypersonic speeds and impart TREMENDOUS kinetic energy.
It is all very well to want such a weapon, though. It is something else entirely to build one.
The Russians just showed that they can, and have.
And that changes everything.
Brave New World
“Oreshnik” falls into an intermediate-range class of weapons – it can hit targets between 500Km and 5,500Km away. But it is non-nuclear, which means launching it does not breach the nuclear threshold that would immediately trigger a global thermonuclear war. That means Russia can sling these around, anytime it wants, against any target it wants, anywhere on continental Europe, or at much of the continental FUSA, if they position an “Oreshnik” launcher way out east near Kamchatka.
That means every single NATO base in Europe, including those stupid “Aegis Ashore” launchers in Poland and Germany, is now within range of a non-nuclear deterrent that can wipe them off the face of the Earth in under 15 minutes.
And there is absolutely no way to counter “Oreshnik”. None. No Western air defence system has the ability to intercept this thing.
In other words, Russia has just firmly established deterrence against all of NATO.
No NATO power can now launch any kind of attack against Russia, by land, from less than 5,500Km away. But NATO has no conventional weapons, outside of Tomahawk missiles, that can reach Russia from those distances. It also has no way to perform deep strikes against Russia using so-called “stealth” technology, because we know the Russians have already figured out how to detect “stealth” aircraft using mobile long-wave radar installations.
If you don’t believe me, just look at what the Russians are doing in Syria and Iran. We have gone from the days of triumphalist headlines about how S-400 Triumf radars in Syria failed to detect Israeli F-35Is, to much more shell-shocked ones about how the Iranians, using Russian technology, probably saw every Israeli F-35I coming during the October strikes, and forced them to abort their attacks. (Those same earlier chest-thumping articles failed to account for the fact that Russia has no desire to go to war with Israel, and has made it very clear that their S-400 systems are there specifically to protect Russian assets at Khmeimim and Latakia from NATO – NOT for the Syrians to protect themselves against the Izzies.)
Russia, on the other hand, has a completely asymmetric ability to hit NATO right where it hurts. There is only limited value in trying to dig underground – “Oreshnik” seems to be able to penetrate deep into the earth with tremendous force. Moreover, it would only take a couple of “Oreshnik” launches to completely overwhelm the very limited NATO air defence umbrella.
Consider the footage we saw from the attack on Dniepropetrovsk:
Six batches of six projectiles, all smashing into the ground. That is 36 projectiles to intercept – at quite low altitude, relatively speaking, as far as I can tell – and all of them are moving at 2-3Km/s at the time of impact.
Even if there were an air defence system anywhere in the West capable of intercepting a SINGLE such projectile, standard missile defence doctrine calls for the use of TWO interceptors for every projectile.
That means a theoretically capable PATRIOT PAC-3 or THAAD system would need to launch a MINIMUM of 72 interceptor missiles, all with a 100% probability of kill, to neutralise a single “Oreshnik” strike, after the MIRVs separate from the main rocket.
There is no such thing as a missile interceptor with a 100% probability of kill. Moreover, launching that many missile interceptors would deplete an entire battery almost instantly. And there simply are not very many such batteries in the world, for the West.
The only way to kill this thing, is to intercept it before the MIRV separation happens (assuming that is what actually happens – I don’t know). Even there, the FUSA has only limited capabilities in this realm. My understanding is that the primary exoatmospheric missile defence system used by the US for such things, is the SM-3 interceptor launched by the Aegis.
There are relatively few such missiles anywhere in existence.
The bottom line is that, no matter how we try to look at it, “Oreshnik” simply changes the rules of the game.
Conclusion – FAFO
The “Oreshnik” is Russia’s final warning. I pointed this out in my earlier poast on the subject, where I noted that Russia now reserves the right to strike at any NATO base, if it sees fit, because Russia now considers itself at war with all of NATO. If the FUSA and PommieBastardLande continue to sponsor Ukraine’s strikes on pre-2014 Russian territory using ATACMS and Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles, then Russia considers itself permitted to strike, say, the American missile base at Redzikowo in Poland.
The NATO powers have pointedly refused to take the hint.
We have news today that Ukraine used ATACMS missiles to successfully attack an S-400 battery that was down for maintenance, and managed to take out a couple of launchers. They also used Storm Shadow missiles to attack locations in Kursk and elsewhere along the border, within Russia.
Now Russia has said it will respond to those strikes. We are all waiting with bated breath to find out what that retaliation will entail.
The West keeps trying to paint itself as the victim of Russian aggression here. It is the exact opposite. It is the West that has consistently and routinely been the aggressor, provoking Russia in every way possible. And it is Russia that has consistently shown restraint, patience, and immense forbearance.
It was the US, not Russia, that wanted to put Dark Eagle hypersonic strike missiles in Germany and, eventually, Ukraine, in 2026 – never mind that the Dark Eagle has failed its testing schedules repeatedly. It was the US, not Russia, that insisted on launching proxy wars against Russia through Georgia and then Ukraine. And it was the US, not Russia, that insisted on arming Ukraine – under the Trump Administration, no less.
Now the Russians consider themselves free of their self-imposed restraints. They have weapons which literally no one else can match – and no one can intercept. They can, if they want, destroy every last major NATO base in Europe in a single strike.
Yet it is NATO that continues to f*** around.
Soon enough, we will find out what the penalty is. I doubt it will be pretty.
1 Comment
“My understanding is that the primary exoatmospheric missile defence system used by the US for such things, is the SM-3 interceptor launched by the Aegis.”
All of their long-range interceptors use exo-atmospheric spacecraft: SM-3 Block I/II, THAAD, GMD.
That may also be a problem. Footage from elsewhere in Russia appears to show an in-atmosphere boost trajectory, with the missile in a sort of plasma bubble. If the boost phase happens in-atmopshere, none of our long-range interceptors can affect Oreshnik even if they catch it before payload release. Their kill vehicles aren’t designed for in-atmosphere intercepts. Would they even survive in-atmosphere deployment?
The next question involves total system range, and the breakdowns between each stage. If Ritter is right and the payloads are full hypersonic missiles with submunitions, separation could be far enough away that no Western interceptor could reasonably even reach that far.
Once the payloads are deployed, of course, we can’t do much against maneuvering hypersonics.