Russia has developed a nuclear-powered cruise missile | Hacker News Reader

Russia has developed a nuclear-powered cruise missile

cbsnews.com

12 points1gor27 comments

This reminds me of this horrendousity: https://jalopnik.com/the-flying-crowbar-the-insane-doomsday-...

I doubt this will see much traction. A nuclear powered ramjet will not be a small device (like the ALCM, or the upcoming LRSO), and will not be cheap. If it's large, putting out a lot of heat, it will be detectable. If it can be detected, it can be shot down.

Cruise missiles fly very, very low. No chance of ground-based radar noticing them for long enough to shoot anything (milliseconds as they streak overhead). So space-based, or some pursuit missile seems like the only chance of shooting them down.

Current plans are for fighters to be directed by AWACs. But the larger the missile, the higher it has to fly. It's difficult on an airframe to fly low and fast, so the detection range will increase the higher the altitude.

Often height is for fuel efficiency? Thinner air up there. With an atomic engine, that's moot.

Higher altitude to avoid CFIT (controlled flight into terrain). The faster you fly, the less reaction time you have. So instead of being able to hug the ground at say 100ft AGL, you have to bump up to 1000ft.

Also, the reason the US stopped development of it's own nuclear powered cruise missile (Pluto project) was because of the research into OTHB (over the horizon backscatter) radars that can detect cruise missiles.

Interesting that he's out rattling the saber after US opened a can of whoop a$$ on his undocumented mercenaries in Syria. The chess pieces are moving around the board a little more vigorously.

The sad part is that they're kind of right in doing so.

NATO went too far with deploying anti-ICBM systems right next to Russia's border (with the Ukraine conflict being the most obvious result of this strategy) essentially nullifying their ability to strike back in case of war. So now they have to find a new way to deliver their weapons, with our missile shield in place, be it cruize missiles or something else, and this is escalating the new cold war.

I don't like seeing research in nuclear weapons done by anyone, especially Russia, but I can't help but feel like this one is on NATO and not Russia.

Funny thing is that a US project of nuclear-powered cruise missile Project Pluto has been abandoned in 1964 among other things in order to "not to provoke" the Russians into developing something similar... "against which there was no known defence".

Project Pluto was abandoned for many other reasons too. Cruize missiles didn't have to be powered by a nuclear ramjet.

Although at the time there was no defence against them, there is now. Developing it will be expensive, and the system will have a rather low hit rate, but modern electronically scanned radars, UAVs and AI-based target detection can easily be tuned to take down cruize missiles regardless of the payload.

> with the Ukraine conflict being the most obvious result of this strategy

Russia fought wars on foreign territories before and after they invaded Ukraine. Syria (2015-current), Georgia (2008 but parts of Georgia are still occupied), Transnistria (1992 but part of Moldova is still occupied).

Syria and Georgia are primarily Russia's fault, no doubt. They definitely aren't saints. However that's irrelevant to what happened in Ukraine. Imagine if Russia stationed a bunch of floating long-range missile batteries right off the coast of the US. It's not illegal, just like asking Ukraine to join EU/NATO, but it's definitely not going to be allowed to happen, even if it means war.

> Imagine if Russia stationed a bunch of floating long-range missile batteries right off the coast of the US.

They have, for decades, they're called ballistic missile subs.

> what happened in Ukraine

Unprovoked military invasion, and forceful annexation of territory, that’s what happened.

> just like asking Ukraine to join EU/NATO

No one has asked Ukraine to join NATO, because Ukrainians were strongly against it. Before Russian invasion, Ukrainians was slightly pro-EU, and strongly against NATO, i.e. 20% for, 65% against.

The public opinion has changing as the result of the ongoing war. Now in Ukraine 60-75% are for NATO, and just 10-25% against.

P.S. Even here in Montenegro, the annexation of Crimea has changed public opinion towards NATO, less dramatically but enough to make it a majority. We joined NATO in 2017.

It was my understanding that Obama had actually dampened Bush's plans for missile defense in Europe, and instead was focused on shorter ranges that would come from Iran, and the redistribution of resources towards an "Asia Pivot".

I love how the U.S.'s spends their money on missile defense while Putin spends money on more powerful nukes.

It says alot about the different midsets of the two countries.

I can't agree with you that this one is 'on NATO' and not Russia for that reason.

If they devoted more money to missile defense then the war would escalate between more powerful defense systems instead of more power systems of destruction.

Putin is a power hungry monster that will destroy the world before looking bad.

> NATO went too far with deploying anti-ICBM systems right next to Russia's border

How can it be too far to install an anti-missile system on your own territory? That seems eminently reasonable and uncontroversial to me. It's not even a euphemism is it? It literally is purely a defensive system?

It's like saying you provoked a burglar by putting a bigger lock on your door.

I've seen this opinion put forward and I don't really get it - wondering what your underlying principles to reach that opinion are?

How is it different than the USSR putting missile bases in Cuba during the Cold War?

These are anti-missile missiles. They can only strike other missiles in the air (unless you know more about the tech than I do). The USSR's missiles in Cuba were missiles to strike land targets.

Yes but the agreement between the two sides was that they wouldn't put military forces near each other's borders. I think Turkey counts.

> It's like saying you provoked a burglar by putting a bigger lock on your door.

This is a poor analogy due to a nation-state not being analogous to a burglar. Especially due to a burglar being a deviant and a nation-state not (inherently) being a deviant. Also in your scenario, one party is deviant and the other is protecting their home (one-sided).

A defensive act like setting up missile shields runs counter to "mutually assured destruction" (it's not so mutual when one side has a missile shield).

> and a nation-state not (inherently) being a deviant.

I think modern Russia is a deviant. Here’s a recent news about high-ranking officials doing large-scale international drug trafficking, using a government jet for that:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-argent...

What do you mean by “a nation-state not being a deviant”? Any nation-state that used nuclear weapons to attack would most definitely be a deviant.

> How can it be too far to install an anti-missile system on your own territory? That seems eminently reasonable and uncontroversial to me. It's not even a euphemism is it? It literally is purely a defensive system?

This is an old argument that goes back to the cold war. ABM systems were prohibited by treaty because an effective ABM system is not purely a defensive system. It breaks the deadlock described by Mutually-Assured Destruction. MAD means neither side can rationally initiate a first strike because an attack will result in the destruction of both sides. An ABM system that actually works, controlled by only one side, means that side can make a first strike and not be destroyed.

That is not necessarily an argument against developing defensive systems. During the eighties one thing people suggested for addressing this was to essentially give US-developed ABM technology to the USSR, or to jointly develop the technology, etc. The system's deployment would be followed by a gradual reduction in nuclear stockpiles by both sides. The thinking being, if both sides possess the defensive technology the amount of tension involved in reducing nuclear stockpiles and achieving disarmament is reduced. None of that went anywhere.

I wonder how useful for space exploration this could be? That is, make a non-cruise variant for long distance satellite/human launches?

I assume the Russian missile is a nuclear powered jet engine, assuming it exists, while for space you need a nuclear powered rocket engine. Different tech. The US tested a nuclear rocket engine on the ground in 1967 and it looked well cool. I'd vote for giving it's development a go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket#/media/...

The US also built nuclear powered jet engines in the 60s but found for piloted aircraft you'd either need tons of lead shielding or kill the pilots. It's rumoured the Russians actually flew one and killed said pilots.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com