In the early 2000s, on Zelig, Beppe Braida joked about the different interpretations of the news: on the same news regarding Silvio Berlusconi, TG3 presented it with a neutral tone, TG5 extolled the goodness of the president and finally TG4 shouted about a phantom “communist attack”.

Today, when faced with the new Russian video on the Burevestnik nuclear-powered missile, the reaction is similar: enthusiastic headlines, apocalyptic tones, little technical context. There are those who emphasize it as an “infinite missile” and an “invincible weapon”, those who even define it as a “flying Chernobyl”, up to the Putinian Fact which relaunches with an openly catastrophist title and calls for the surrender of Ukraine.

The reality is simpler (and less spectacular). Nuclear-powered missile projects date back to the 1950s in the United States: between 1955 and 1964 the Pentagon worked on the SLAM (Supersonic Low-Altitude Missile) program, a carrier designed to fly for a long time, at low altitude and carrying multiple nuclear warheads around the globe. The program was abandoned because it was very expensive, problematic for the release of fission products and increasingly less decisive in a context of rapidly developing anti-missile defenses.

Because the Burevestnik doesn’t change the balance

The Burevestnik takes up that logic in a simplified form: a single payload, theoretically large autonomy to vary course and direction, a small-sized reactor that heats air via exchangers to generate thrust. It is perfect material for propaganda, but it has at least four structural constraints:

1. Cost and effectiveness: compared to more “banal” alternatives (ICBMs, conventional cruises, hypersonic systems), the cost/benefit ratio is unfavorable.
2. Radiological risk: if the nucleus retains the fission products during flight, these are still dispersed on impact. Even carrying a conventional warhead, the side effect would be that of a radiological dispersal device: a dirty bomb scenario would lead to immediate retaliation.
3. Reliability and safety: ignition requires initial chemical push; incidents in the past have shown critical issues in propellant management and site safety. In August 2019 there was an explosion at a Burevestnik development site that caused radioactive substances to leak into the surrounding area and killed at least four people.
4. Speed ​​and interceptability: Subsonic speed facilitates maneuverability and complicates early detection, but once tracked the vector is more interceptable than faster systems.

Added to all this is a technological maturity that has not yet been demonstrated in a repeatable way: controlling an extremely compact reactor in flight is complex and the events of recent years remind us of this. Also because we are talking about a core that must necessarily be as small and light as possible and therefore with an enrichment that probably reaches weapon-grade. In the event of something malfunctioning, there are several conceivable accident scenarios in which the core melts.

In short, we are not faced with a strategic “game changer”. The Burevestnik is above all a political-propaganda message. It is at least the third time in two years that Russia has presented the new final superweapon to the world with the belief that this will lead the West to surrender: the first was the atomic torpedo that causes radioactive tsunamis (the Poseidon, a first-rate farce given that water is among the materials that absorb radiation best) and the second the Oreshnik ballistic missile. These purely propagandistic displays of force should be treated with the right degree of skepticism, if not outright hilarity.