• Hamish de Bretton-Gordon

Putin’s nuclear-powered crawler missile is a white elephant. The US holds the whip hand

The ‘Burevestnik’ appears to have been built more because it could be than because it should be

This video grab provided by RU-RTR Russian television via AP television on Thursday, March 1, 2018, shows the launch of what President Vladimir Putin said is Russia’s new nuclear-powered intercontinental cruise missileCredit: RU-RTR Russian Television

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon

30 October 2025

In the increasing war of words and threats, Vladimir Putin’s latest gambit has been to dust off one of the six “super weapons” he claimed Russia had in 2018, and say that it has had a successful test.

The weapon in question is the “Burevestnik” nuclear-powered cruise missile. This seems like something that was built because it could be, not because there was any real reason to. If it genuinely does work, it has more or less unlimited range and endurance, to be sure. But it’s still just a sub-sonic cruise weapon – basically an unmanned aeroplane.

Much has been made of the fact that – again, if it genuinely works – the Burevestnik will be able to stay at low altitude for its entire flight. A more normal jet-powered cruise missile, it is true, needs to conduct at least some of its journey higher up to achieve maximum range: jet engines work fine at low altitudes but they burn much more fuel when down low.

And yes, low altitude is a good way to avoid being spotted by normal, ground-based radar stations. Flying low, a missile or a drone or an aircraft is usually below the horizon from a ground-based radar station unless it comes very close.

But this problem has long been solved by Western nations. You simply put the defensive radar in a high flying plane, which has line of sight across hundreds of miles of territory. The Burevestnik can wander off around the world and approach from an unexpected direction as much as it likes: as soon as it gets within a few hundred miles of a Nato AWACS plane, it will be detected.

Of course, from Putin’s point of view, low-flying cruise missiles seem much more impressive. It is no great surprise that Putin should spring his not-so-new battle winning cruise missile onto the stage after he and his entourage were panicked when it seemed that Ukraine may get significant numbers of America’s Tomahawk cruise missiles – which we know from the US attack on Iran earlier this year can easily penetrate Russian air defences.

Russia does have an AWACS-type plane, the Beriev A-50, but it only had nine of these nominally operational at the start of the wider Ukraine war – probably translating to half a dozen at best working on any given day. The Ukrainians have now destroyed several of those Berievs, and it seems unlikely that Putin can keep even one A-50 airborne around the clock. Even petrol-engined Ukrainian drones have managed to reach Moscow: Putin is right to fear the Tomahawk.

Meanwhile this Burevestnik missile, nicknamed the “flying Chernobyl dustbin”, is exactly that, rubbish – and there are a whole host of reasons why this is the case.

Firstly, the cost of this missile will be astronomic. Each one has a nuclear-powered jet engine.  Nobody in Russia wants to admit how much this costs, which is no surprise when the Russian economy is in freefall and President Trump has now placed his knife to its jugular, threatening the oil exports which are the only thing keeping Putin going. Tomahawk missiles nowadays cost well under $1m: a Burevestnik will cost an astronomical sum.

This directs us to the second challenge for Putin, in that the most significant lesson from the current fight is the importance of mass.  Thousands of drones, thousands of missiles are needed: “boot them, don’t spatter them” as the legendary German panzer general Heinz Guderian would say.  It seems that Putin is going to spend on one missile enough money to buy tens if not hundreds of more basic ones. But Ukraine has once again illustrated that “quantity has a quality all of its own”.

The other great weakness of the Burevestnik is that it is comparatively slow. It would be easily taken out by fighter jets. The fact trumpeted by the Russian military boss Gerasimov, that it can travel many thousands of kilometres, to me is a negative, not a positive – we get 10 hours to acquire and destroy this target?

The Russians are presenting the Burevestnik as being usable with either nuclear or conventional warheads, but I cannot see the logic in either role.  If it is in the nuclear role and Armageddon has been triggered, as we learn from Annie Jacobsen’s brilliant book, Nuclear War, there is in effect only 60 minutes of the nuclear fight until it’s all pretty much over – this missile is still hours from its target!

Then if it is in the conventional role, when it explodes or hits its intended target there is going to be radioactive contamination from the nuclear fuel and reactor, which might be mistaken for a tactical nuclear weapon and hence precipitate a nuclear exchange. With the target area getting contaminated regardless, it’s not clear why you’d ever use this weapon with a non-nuclear warhead.

Previously the Russians have declared hypersonic missiles are the only way forward. Moscow has now decided that a technological white elephant which moves almost at walking pace compared to hypersonics is the weapon to subjugate Ukraine and hold our timid and nuclear fearful western leaders at bay?  Long may this attitude persist in the Kremlin.

The Burevestnik certainly doesn’t seem to have cowed the US President. In an angry response from Air Force One, Trump told Putin he has the “most powerful” submarine full of nuclear missiles off the coast of Russia which can obliterate most of Putin’s kingdom in  minutes, and hours before the new Russia missile gets anywhere near the US. Trump went on to order the restart of nuclear testing after 30 years.

In effect, the “new” Russian weapon appears to ignore every lesson being learnt in Ukraine. But let us hope the Russians continue to waste resources down this technological blind alley. Perhaps it will galvanise Trump to release hundreds of Tomahawks to Kyiv, which is far more likely to get Putin to negotiate for peace, than his wonder weapon is to secure his victory.