How Dangerous is Russia’s New Hypersonic Oreshnik Missile?

By Cameron Curtis,

Game Changer

Game Changer: A factor introduced into play such that the game can no longer be played in the same way.

On November 21, 2024, the Russian Federation struck the Yuzhmash Machine Building Plant in Dnipropetrovsk with the Oreshnik. The Oreshnik was a never-before-seen intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). The Ukrainians initially thought the weapon was an RS-26 Rubezh ICBM. They could be forgiven this mistake, because the Oreshnik appears to use the RS-26 as a booster. The warhead assembly, however, is a brand-new design, probably a MIRV-capable hypersonic glide vehicle.

“Oreshnik” means “hazel” in Russian, a reference to a hazel tree’s spring flowers. The new missile sports a MIRV warhead – a Multiple Independently Targeted Re-entry Vehicle. In its terminal phase, the Oreshnik’s warhead bus releases six MIRVs. Such technology is not new. Both US and Russian ICBMs have been equipped with MIRV technology for decades. What is new is that the six Oreshnik MIRVs each open up and release six more submunitions, for a total of 36 warheads. Those warheads rained down on the Yuzhmash factory.

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Of crucial importance, the Oreshnik warheads that struck Yuzhmash were not nuclear. They could have been, but instead, they carried no explosives at all. They relied on their hypersonic speed of Mach 10 to 12 to generate enough heat and kinetic energy to penetrate the earth and destroy the factory’s underground production halls. The attack was devastating. Russia is now able to deliver blows of strategic scale without the use of nuclear weapons.

The US, locked into its current vector of tactical conventional and tactical/strategic nuclear weapons, has been left scrambling to revise its nuclear doctrine.

The game has changed.