Last November, Russia launched a new kind of missile into Ukraine. Moscow debuted the intermediate-range ballistic missile Oreshnik (meaning “hazelnut tree” in Russian) in an attack on Dnipro. Though it used only inert submunitions, it marked yet another attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to signal his willingness to escalate.
Footage of the strike and analysis of satellite imagery suggests that the Oreshnik can likely carry six warheads each armed with six submunitions, for a total of 36. As the missile descends toward Earth, it can disperse these submunitions to blanket a wide area with explosives, similar to how a shotgun sprays shot.
Last November, Russia launched a new kind of missile into Ukraine. Moscow debuted the intermediate-range ballistic missile Oreshnik (meaning “hazelnut tree” in Russian) in an attack on Dnipro. Though it used only inert submunitions, it marked yet another attempt by Russian President Vladimir Putin to signal his willingness to escalate.
Footage of the strike and analysis of satellite imagery suggests that the Oreshnik can likely carry six warheads each armed with six submunitions, for a total of 36. As the missile descends toward Earth, it can disperse these submunitions to blanket a wide area with explosives, similar to how a shotgun sprays shot.
The Oreshnik is also almost certainly capable of being armed with nuclear warheads, and many experts have focused analysis primarily on these capabilities and the role that the missile plays in Putin’s nuclear signaling. But relatively little has been said about the Oreshnik’s conventional capabilities and how it might enable a change in Russia’s targeting strategy in a potential future war with NATO.
In a conflict where forces are dispersed over large areas, as is the case in Ukraine, an expensive missile like the Oreshnik is a poor choice. But the Oreshnik makes perfect sense for attacking dense targets like air bases, where its conventional submunitions can deal significant damage.
In a televised interview last December, Putin remarked that with the Oreshnik, Russia was “practically on the edge of having no need to use nuclear weapons.” The Russian leader was exaggerating, but there was a grain of truth to his statement. A mass Russian strike with conventional Oreshnik missiles on NATO strategic sites—such as air bases, command and control facilities, and missile bases—could leave NATO reeling without Putin using nuclear arms.
In a war with NATO, Russia is likely to attack the alliance’s air bases in the opening days of a conflict. Russia is well aware of NATO’s air superiority, and it hopes to give its forces some breathing room by destroying—or at least delaying—NATO’s ability to respond.
Modern fighter aircraft—particularly the F-35, which multiple NATO states increasingly use as their multirole aircraft of choice—are too complex to be repaired in the field. F-35s and similar aircraft were designed to be supported by large, sophisticated air bases. Decades of budget cuts have concentrated NATO’s airpower in only a handful of these bases, making them uniquely vulnerable to the Oreshnik’s shotgun-style munitions.
Russia’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) could certainly make short work of NATO air bases. But when it comes to conventional weapons, Russia’s experience in Ukraine has revealed problems with attacking strategic sites with its existing missiles. Russian missiles that are armed with unitary conventional warheads have failed to disable key Ukrainian air bases and other facilities due to a combination of low accuracy and successful Ukrainian air defenses.
The Oreshnik helps solve this problem. Based on Russia’s performance in Ukraine, it may take dozens of conventional Iskander missiles to destroy aircraft at major air bases. It would take far fewer Oreshniks to achieve a similar effect. During the Nov. 21 attack, a single Oreshnik missile dropped 36 inert submunitions on the Pivdenmash rocket manufacturing complex. If the submunitions had not been inert, the missile would have done extensive damage over a large area, negating the accuracy problems of Russia’s Iskander and Kh-101 missiles.
The good news is the Oreshnik’s conventional capabilities will give Russia more non-nuclear options, theoretically lessening the risk that the Kremlin would contemplate using nuclear weapons early in a conflict. The bad news is the Oreshnik’s non-nuclear capacities mean Russia will have more options to significantly disrupt NATO operations at the conventional level.
Current European defenses will do little to protect against the Oreshnik. Despite many NATO bases being protected by a multilayered missile defense grid, the Oreshnik can fly above the intercept range of most systems and comes down to Earth too fast for most terminal interceptors, such as the Patriot air defense system. The interceptors that can stop the Oreshnik—namely, the Arrow 3 and the SM-3 Block IIA systems—will likely have limited inventories if current procurement trajectories hold. In addition, Russian decoys and other countermeasures may be able to fool interceptors into going after a fake target.
The Oreshnik is not a technically difficult weapon to make. Russia is well-versed in the technology involved and has been making the rocket engines for missiles similar to the Oreshnik for decades. Russia is already expanding its missile production facilities to rebuild its arsenal in the long term. Notably, some of the facilities being expanded, such as the Kamensky Plant located across from Ukraine’s eastern border, specialize in the sort of large ICBM-sized rocket motors the Oreshnik uses.
Regardless of how the war in Ukraine ends, in a decade or two NATO may face a rearmed Russia wielding a reconstituted arsenal in which large conventional ballistic missiles like the Oreshnik feature prominently. This new force could defy expectations that Russia will become more reliant on its nuclear arsenal as its conventional capabilities deteriorate.
NATO should begin preparing for this now by making its major air bases less attractive targets for Russian missiles. This can be achieved by dispersing aircraft to remote locations—minor runways and highways throughout Europe—in a crisis so they are harder for Russia to find, target, and destroy.
Some NATO states already train and prepare for certain refueling and rearming operations at dispersed locations. But the problem of aircraft complexity remains. Though dispersion can help ensure the survival of the aircraft themselves, the major air bases will remain tempting targets because of how dependent fighter aircraft are on these bases for intensive maintenance. If Russia can attack these larger bases, it will be able to destroy the valuable maintenance tools and parts stockpiles that keep fighter aircraft running in combat.
To plan for a reconstituted and possibly more dangerous Russian missile force, NATO states should embrace a dispersal plan that allows for longer operations in the field. This plan would require investment in more spare parts and support equipment, as well as the ability to conduct more complicated maintenance operations in the field—such as through mobile units equipped with workstations inside vehicles that would be dispatched to sites to maintain aircraft. This would aid both deterrence and warfighting.
Two problems stand in the way of this effort, but both can be rectified. The first is parts. Budget cuts across many NATO air forces have reduced the readiness rate of aircraft. This is a problem especially for the F-35 fleet, where parts backlogs are widespread, but it extends to other aircraft such as the Eurofighter Typhoon. NATO states should budget for and invest heavily in not only fixing this parts shortfall but also exceeding it, maintaining depots of aircraft parts across their territory to ensure aircraft can be quickly returned to service from wherever they may be dispersed to.
The second problem is experience and personnel. The Government Accountability Office has noted in the past that U.S. military personnel lack experience in many maintenance tasks related to the F-35 due partly to the lack of spare parts and support equipment. Given the global state of the F-35 supply chain, other NATO states will also likely face these problems.
NATO states should regularly practice and perform more complicated maintenance and ensure that they are able to do these tasks on any F-35, regardless of what air force it belongs to. The alliance conducted its first-ever cross-service maintenance exercise with the F-35 last year. Such exercises should be a regular occurrence in all NATO states equipped with the F-35 to ensure jets can easily return to the war regardless of where they have been dispersed. Combined, these measures can reduce NATO’s reliance on a small number of major bases that may be heavily damaged in the opening days of a war.
Russia’s difficulty with long-range strikes against defended military targets in Ukraine should not make Europe complacent about the safety of its forces in the coming decades. The Oreshnik and other systems like it may defy expectations about Russian military posture, and, without action, they will take a toll on NATO’s ability to sustain the fight in a future war.
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