US Has No Defense Against Russia Hypersonic ICBM That Hit Ukraine

Written by Chriss W. Street

Russian intercontinental ballistic missile that attacked Ukraine last week appears to be a Mach 11 hypersonic variant of the multiple-independent -warhead RS-26 Rubezh code named Oreshnik, or Hazel in English.

The launch of the most disruptive weapon on the planet, followed U.S. President Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer authorizing Ukraine to fire NATO supplied ATACMS, Storm Shadows and SCALPS on targets deep into Russia territory.

The Russian ICBM appeared to inflict virtually no horizonal surface damage to the Ukrainian Pivdenmash military industrial complex in Dnipro City, that was once the Soviet’s World premier space and missile production facility.

The low-altitude missile traveling 600 miles at Mach 11.8 (7,332 mph) made high-energy light flashes with cloud-level deployments of 23 sub-munition packages.  The non-nuclear warheads and/or decoys then precisely hit their ground targets in 0.15 seconds at a speed of Mach 10.  

The Pivdenmash’s production workshops are buried in massive caverns over 100 feet below ground.  The producer of over half of the Soviet Union’s nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles during the Cold War, Pivdenmash was set to become a NATO strategic missile contractor.

But the Oreshnik damage to the underground target must be astonishing:

From https://impact.uwo.ca/impact-craters/products-of-impact-crater/

Each of the missile’s packages of warheads separated, then penetrated deep underground with incredible momentum to create kinetic shock waves as powerful as if they had detonated charges.  Furthermore, the kinetic effect during Ukraine’s rainy season would be spectacularly enhanced by an instantaneous mass expansion of the soil moisture when exposed to high temperatures caused by the friction of the clusters diving underground.

Russia is reported to have given a 30-minute before launch warning to US officials through nuclear risk reduction channels, who must have warned Ukraine before the ICBM launch.  The night-time missile launch was detected in the Russian region of Astrakhan, about 1.000 km from its military target in the Southern Ukraine City of Dnipro.

The Oreshnik missile’s speed and 23 packages of unknown numbers of warheads and/or decoys would overwhelm the top US anti-ballistic missile defense system called the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense(THAAD).  The system operated by a crew of 100features radar, command and control, and 48 missile interceptors in six truck-mounted launchers. 

THAAD interceptors rather than exploding a warhead on target intercept, use kinetic “hit-to-kill’technology to neutralize short to intermediate-range ballistic missiles inside and outside the Earth's atmosphere. But the system was never designed for hypersonic low-altitude ICBM’s  

The Biden Administration defense officials are calling the Oreshnik an experimental missile; and that the Russians only have a few missiles available if it is deployable.  

This sounds like pure propaganda at the inauguration of a new era of offensive missile technology.