War in Ukraine: speed, distance, nuclear capacity… What we know about “Noisetier”, this Russian hypersonic missile which can “threaten almost all of Europe and the west coast of the United States”

President Vladimir Putin welcomed the firing of a new Russian hypersonic missile against a Ukrainian arms factory on Thursday November 21, 2024. A previously unknown weapon, used for the first time by Russia against Ukraine and to warn the West.

Here is what we know about this still experimental missile called “Orechnik”, or “Hazel” in Russian.

The Russian president declared during a press briefing that this missile was used “in response to American plans for the production and deployment of short- and medium-range missiles”, in reference to ATACMS (new window), before specifying that Russia would “respond decisively and symmetrically” in the event of escalation.

Thousands of kilometers

Until its use on Thursday November 21, 2024, the existence of this new weapon for Russia was unknown. According to Mr. 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 approximately 1,000 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 Ostorozhno Novosti media.

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 Matveyev on Telegram, who assures that the missile can carry an explosive charge 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, for 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” (around 12,350 km/h).

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

Several heads

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 in the world and the anti-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.