March 04, 2018

A Quick Overview of Putin's Atomic Superweapons



This past Tuesday R.F. President Vladimir Putin gave a State of the Federation speech. The speech is actually interesting for a number of reasons, including a surprising disquesition on the rising poverty in The Federation. Towards the end of the speech Putin mentioned several new nuclear weapons that he says are coming into Russian service in the near future....which is pretty much all anyone is talking about.


In fairness, they are, shall we say, interesting.

SARMAT: The most conventional of the weapons mentioned, this is an ICBM replacement for the R-36 (NATO codename "SS-18 Satan") missile. In the speech , Putin seemed to confirm what has been reported elsewhere; that it has a 10 ton throw weight and that its range is antipodal, that is, it can hit any point on Earth. This means that it can hit shoot at the U.S. over Antarctica and hit North America from the South.  SARMAT seems to basically be the old Soviet FOBS missile but larger and much more capable. 10 metric tons is enough for a lot of 'splody, reports suggest that it will carry 10-24 warheads. Some of them may be manuverable hypersonic warheads.

Kinzhal: This hypersonic weapon may have a non-nuclear warhead option, It appears to be separate from the hypersonic manuverable reentry warheads tossed by SARMAT. It is not new, in fact the technology was enthusiastically pursued by the U.S.A. some years ago but it was put on the back burner for a time, and now the U.S. is playing catch-up. 

Status-6:  Putin asked for a public vote on what the name should be and, not being Brits, the names chosen were not Nuky McNukeface. If unleashed, it's a huge nuclear powered torpedo carrying a huge warhead, specifically, the warhead is alleged to be based upon the Tsar Bomba, the highest yield weapon ever tested. That device yielded either 50 or 58 megatons depending on the source and was a clean/half yield test of a warhead that was intended to have a 100 megaton yield. (Later, when it was briefly considered as the payload of an abortive ICBM the physics package was described as a 150 megaton weapon). So this is basically a torpedo with an atomic waterjet that carries a 50-150 megaton warhead into a harbor that will utterly destroy and irradiate it. This weapon appears to be either operational or in advanced testing.

Nuclear Powered Cruise Missile: A supersonic missile powered by a nuclear ramjet, it appears to have similarities to a weapon that was developed in the United States and abandoned for several reasons that included but were not limited to the difficulty of testing a weapon that would spew radioactive death as exhaust and the issues of firing a weapon that spews radioactive death across continents. It has the advantage of being able to fly low for long periods and evade intercept radars by coming in from unexpected directions. In the video, it is shown to do a tactical dogleg...around Cape Horn, which shows how much range the nuclear engine gives. 

It has been suggested that this weapon explains some anomalous radioactive readings detected in Alaska  recently. 

With the possible exception of Status 6/Kraken none of these seem to be operational and are unlikely to be so in the next few years. 

So don't be alarmed. Our near future is unlikely to look quite like this.



...because our cars are not nearly that stylish.





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