In the last few hours there has been a lot of talk about hypersonic missiles Oreshnik related to the war between Russia and Ukraine: the Russian government confirmed a few days ago that it had also put them into operation in Belarus and last night ago Ukraine was hit by this weapon. But what are its characteristics from a technical point of view?
The Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile (which in Russian means hazelnut) is a new generation weapon and, according to what the US military reported, it would be capable of achieving hypersonic speeds equal to Mach 10 – equivalent to over 12 thousand km/h. What makes him particularly fearsome, however, in addition to his speed, is his ability to transport multiple warheads at the same time, be these conventional or nuclear, allowing the weapon to hit multiple targets.
Speaking instead of dimensions, the missile is estimated to measure between 15 and 18 meters in length for a diameter of approx 1.8 meters. From the information at our disposal we know that it is a missile two stages powered by solid fuelwith an estimated range between 1000 hey 5500 km. To this we add one last detail, that is, to launch theOreshnik TEL (Transporter Elevator Launcher) systems are used: these are specialized vehicles which, as the name suggests, are able to transport, direct and finally launch the missile towards the desired target. This clearly allows the weapon to be much more versatile, to be launched from the best position and to go more unnoticed during the transport phase.
According to what has been reported by the main analysts in the sector, the Oreshnik is not a real weapon from scratch but rather one modified version of an already existing missile, such as theRS-26 Rubezh.
