dudeUkraine-Russia war latest: Putin claims successful test of ‘invincible’ nuclear-capable missile
“The 9M730 Burevestnik (Russian: Буревестник; “Storm petrel”, NATO reporting name: SSC-X-9 Skyfall) is a Russian low-flying, nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile under development for the Russian Armed Forces. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the missile’s range is effectively unlimited.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik
Also from that article: Director of the Federation of American Scientists’s Nuclear Information Project Hans M. Kristensen points out that the Burevestnik will be as vulnerable as any cruise missile, and questions the motive behind it, since the longer it flies the more time there is to track it.
Former Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear researcher Cheryl Rofer and former top State Department official with the Arms Control Association Thomas Countryman have both pointed out the risk of nuclear contamination to Russia itself, with Countryman calling the weapon system “uniquely stupid” and calling it a “flying Chernobyl”.
Didn’t the US come up with the idea of a nuclear powered ramjet missile back around the cold war? I seem to recall the idea was that it’d massively contaminate everything it flew over before crashing and exploding. It would be able to fly for many hours or days and shooting it down just meant a load of radioactive scrap landed on your head. I think it too was deemed “uniquely stupid” and shelved, but it sounds like the Russians have resurected the idea.
Yes, the nuclear torpedo was too.
Yep, the USA build a bunch of them and ran several tests, so they are very qualified to know how bad an idea this is. Radioactive pollution in the air + the risk of an active nuclear reactor falling from the sky. Supposedly some Russians have already died in 2019 when recovering a missile that crashed in 2017.
A much more in depth article than the wiki article, but with more speculation: basicint.org/brief-burevestnik/
The Russian way: Impractical, self-harming, unreliable, half-assed. 10% research, 20% development, 20% hype, 50% damage control and saving face.