what is this formidable hypersonic missile fired by the Russians?

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He can browse 5,000 km at incredible speed. A new Russian hypersonic missile has entered the war in Ukraine with the firing of an experimental missile called “Orechnik”, or “Hazel” in Russian.

This hitherto unknown weapon, used for the first time by Russia against Ukraine, looks like a warning to the West after the Americans and British announced the authorization to use their long-range missiles on Russian territory.

President Vladimir Putin welcomed Thursday the firing of this new hypersonic missile against a Ukrainian arms factory.

Here's what we know.

Thousands of kilometers

Until its use on Thursday, the existence of this new weapon for Russia was unknown. According to Vladimir Putin, it is an “intermediate range” ballistic missile and can therefore reach targets between 3,000 and 5,500 km.

According to the Russian president, the firing was a test in combat conditions, meaning that this weapon is still in development. He gave no indication of how many systems exist, but he threatened to reuse it.

The distance between the Russian region of Astrakhan, from where the Oreshnik missile was fired on Thursday according to kyiv, and the satellite manufacturing plant Pivdenmash (Youzhmash, in Russian), which it hit in Dnipro (central-east of Ukraine), is about 1000 km.

If it therefore does not fall into the category of intercontinental missiles (with a range of more than 5,500 km), fired from the Russian Far East, Orechnik could theoretically hit targets on the west coast of the United States.

“Orechnik can (also) threaten almost the whole of Europe,” notes Pavel Podvig, researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (Unidir) in Geneva, in an interview with the media Ostorozhno Novosti.

Until 2019, Russia and the United States could not field such missiles under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty signed in 1987 during the Cold War.

But in 2019, Donald Trump withdrew Washington from this text, accusing Moscow of violating it, opening the way to a new arms race.

3 km per second

Orechnik “is based on the Russian model of the RS-26 Roubej intercontinental ballistic missile” (itself derived from the “RS-24 Iars”), Pentagon deputy spokesperson Sabrina Singh explained to the press on Thursday.

“This system is quite expensive and is not mass-produced,” says military expert Ian Matveïev on Telegram, who assures that the missile can carry an explosive load of “several tons”.

The RS-26 Roubej armament program, the first successful test of which dates back to 2012, was frozen in 2018, according to the state agency TASS, due to lack of means to carry out this project “simultaneously” with the development new generation Avangard hypersonic systems, supposed to be able to reach a target almost anywhere in the world.
According to Vladimir Putin, the Orechnik missile, fired Thursday “in its non-nuclear hypersonic configuration”, can reach the speed of Mach 10, “or 2.5 to 3 kilometers per second” (approximately 12,350 km/h).

“There is no way today to counter such weapons,” he boasted.

Possible nuclear warheads

Finally, Orechnik would also be equipped with maneuverable charges in the air, which would further increase the difficulty of interception.

“The air defense systems currently available around the world and the missile defense systems created by the Americans in Europe do not intercept these missiles. This is excluded,” Mr. Putin insisted, without providing further details.

A video of the Russian launch, posted on social networks, showed six powerful successive flashes falling from the sky at the time of the attack, a sign, according to experts, that the missile carried at least six charges.

This “mirvage” consists of equipping a missile with several warheads, nuclear or conventional, which each follow an independent trajectory upon entry into the atmosphere.

Political message

Experts remain unanimous on one point: this is indeed a Russian political message to the West and to kyiv. “We are on something unprecedented, and it is much more of a political act than a military act. The cost-effectiveness of the attack is zero,” says Héloïse Fayet, of the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri).

A direct response to Ukraine's recent attack on its territory with American ATACMS missiles, which Washington officially authorized on Sunday.

“This change in scale is significant,” adds the specialist, describing “the first use by the Russians on the battlefield of a missile with a range greater than 2,000 km.”

According to her, the use of this missile “will not significantly change the situation on an operational level. They obviously have very few and they are expensive.”

Source: AFP.

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