On Monday, Reuters reported my discovery that Russia is building what appears to be the first deployment site for its experimental nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Burevestnik—which the United States calls the SSC-X-9 Skyfall. The facility is almost complete, suggesting that the new missile may enter service with the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces soon.
The site is located at a nuclear warhead storage facility, reportedly called Vologda-20, roughly 400 miles from Russia’s borders with Finland and Estonia, and contains nine fixed launch positions supported by missile-handling facilities and nuclear warhead storage bunkers. With the launch positions, missiles, and warheads all present at the same site, it’s likely that the Burevestnik will be an on-alert missile ready to launch at a moment’s notice.
There is significant hype surrounding the Burevestnik: U.S. officials have decried Russia’s development of “radiation-spewing, nuclear-powered cruise missiles” and called the system a “flying Chernobyl.” Unlike standard cruise missiles, which are powered by jet engines, the Burevestnik uses an unshielded nuclear reactor for propulsion. This gives it the ability to fly almost unlimited distances, at least in theory.
If deployed, the Burevestnik would be the first missile of its kind actually fielded. The United States explored the concept of a nuclear-powered missile in the 1950s and 1960s under the banner of Project Pluto but canceled the project due to concerns about the danger the system would pose to the United States’ own population. Such concerns were validated in 2019 when a Burevestnik exploded during a test and killed several Russian missile scientists.
The Burevestnik’s advanced propulsion system and virtually unlimited range may allow Russia to use the missile in radical new ways. In 2020, the United Kingdom’s Chief of Defense Intelligence General James Hockenhull told reporters that Moscow was testing a nuclear-powered cruise missile system with “global reach [that] would allow attack from unexpected directions” and provide a “near indefinite loiter time,” meaning the missile could fly around a designated target for long periods of time before attacking, potentially even circumnavigating the Earth.
The reference to loitering has raised concerns that Russia might launch Burevestnik missiles in a crisis, which could then cruise near U.S. and NATO targets while waiting for instructions. This would allow Moscow to strike quickly once orders are given, significantly shortening the amount of time NATO would have to react to Russian aggression. Some analysts have even speculated that Russia could fly Burevestniks over European territory as a signal before turning around and flying back, potentially intimidating NATO allies into backing down and ceding to Russian demands.
These assessments of the Burevestnik’s potential capabilities, however, are technically infeasible. Russia is unlikely to use the new missile in this way because two factors limit its capabilities and potential uses: range and visibility.
Despite claims from the Russian Ministry of Defense that the missile’s range is effectively unlimited, there are significant costs to flying one great distances or loitering for long periods of time. Missiles can generally find their location by communicating with satellites, but satellite signals can be easily jammed or spoofed. To ensure a missile can operate without relying on satellites, it is also equipped with inertial navigation, which finds the missile’s position through the process of dead reckoning. Consulting mechanical accelerometers and gyroscopes, the missile can determine its position by closely recording its speed and direction and the length of its flight.
But over time, small errors in the missile’s guidance system compound, similar to how a mechanical watch will eventually stop keeping time. Thus, having a missile fly for long periods in a loitering pattern would generate serious risk of it flying off course and missing its target.
Russia could attempt to guide its missiles remotely, but the limited range of Russian communication systems—coupled with the small problem of the curvature of the Earth—drastically restricts the area in which Russia could actively guide a missile. It is unlikely that Russia could send missiles far from home and still be able to reliably communicate with them. If Russia eventually did install remote guidance, the missiles would still be vulnerable to electronic warfare activities.
This does not mean that the Burevestnik’s extended range is useless, however. Cruise missiles are effectively disposable airplanes; like airplanes, their range is determined by fuel-efficiency factors. The altitude at which the missile flies presents an important trade-off: range versus detection. The higher a traditional jet engine-powered missile flies, the more fuel efficient it becomes; because the air is thinner, there is less drag. But cruise missiles flying at higher altitudes are also easier for radar to detect. Conversely, dropping altitude allows missiles to more easily avoid detection, but the thicker air requires jet engines to burn more fuel, significantly shortening the missiles’ range.
The major advantage of the Burevestnik’s nuclear-powered engine is that it does not need to make trade-offs between fuel efficiency and detectability. For example, whereas the United States’ Tomahawk missile, with a range of 770 to 1,550 miles, cannot reach intercontinental targets, the Burevestnik’s engine could theoretically run for days, allowing the missile to fly from its base in Russia to targets even in the United States, all while flying low to avoid radar. Despite the Burevestnik’s reactor enabling such a plan, guiding the missile accurately to the target would still be an immense challenge.
Although the Burevestnik may be more difficult to detect, it is not invisible. Cruise missiles are stealthier than other missiles because they generate strong heat signatures only at the moment of their launch. After that, the heat signature is smaller—not undetectable, but more difficult to track, especially by satellites in space that must see through an often-cloudy atmosphere. For the Burevestnik, however, this advantage dissipates the longer Russia lets it loiter. Placing the missile on in-air standby for long periods of time would give the NATO land-, sea-, air-, and space-based air-defense assets more time to detect the missile and maneuver into place to intercept it.
Russia could have attempted to mitigate this problem by making the launch system mobile, allowing it to hide where the missile originated, but it has not done so. Instead, Russia is building fixed launch sites, which will be closely watched by NATO reconnaissance capabilities for any sign of launch. This makes Burevestnik flights easier to predict and easier to track.
Because of the problems with communications and accuracy, the Burevestnik likely does not have the capability to truly surprise NATO. A better way of understanding the Burevestnik is as a straightforward way to penetrate U.S. and NATO air defenses, capable of flying more-or-less directly toward its target at extreme low altitudes.
The real problem with Burevestnik is that Russia may be compelled to launch it preemptively in a crisis because its fixed deployment site is vulnerable to attack. Moreover, the missile has a very long travel time to intercontinental targets compared to intercontinental ballistic missiles, requiring many hours rather than minutes. A Russian leader may feel pressure to launch a Burevestnik before the United States has a chance to maneuver its air defense assets into place and before the launch site can be destroyed by NATO missiles—including, for example, the conventional hypersonic missiles the United States will deploy to Germany in 2026.
Although Russian leaders may feel pressured to use the Burevestnik preemptively, there is no reason why Moscow could not be deterred from initiating a nuclear war using the missile. NATO states can try to prevent this by investing in military infrastructure that could credibly survive a Russian nuclear first strike and respond, making their targets less tempting in the first place. This means adding dispersion and redundancy into NATO defenses at sites that would be early targets, such as radar and airfields—especially in the United States, where assets have never been credibly threatened by hard-to-detect Russian systems.
The Burevestnik is not a wonder weapon, and the challenges it poses for NATO security are neither new nor unmanageable. It may seem scary on paper, but the technical infeasibility of its mission limits its threat. Much of the hype around the missile stems from Russian saber-rattling about its capabilities. In this context, perhaps one of the best things NATO can do to stay strong in a crisis is to call out this weapon for what it is—a terror weapon, not a silver bullet.
So far, the only people the Burevestnik has killed are its own designers. Combating Russian propaganda will help keep it that way.
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