Oreshnik: Why the missile type matters
Since the Russian launch of the Oreshnik missile in an attack on an underground missile factory in Dnipro, Ukraine, there has been much commentary. The key is whether it is a ballistic missile.
The phrase Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), is of Russian origin. It describes a step change in the military balance of power created by a technical innovation. This could be a new weapons system, new organizational tactics, new communications, or all factors taken together in defining a new military capability.
Some may object to my use of this terminology, since it is of Russian origin.
I am happy using it, since it accurately describes what just happened in the field of missile technology, so far as we can tell, on the evidence before us.
The Oreshnik missile that was fired by Russia into Ukraine looks to me like an RMA.
I use the qualifier “looks” because I really do not know.
However, we can articulate what questions really matter, as to the nature of this new threat from Russia, and which aspects of the missile design may make for an RMA.
Prior Revolutions in Military Affairs
Personally, I have been familiar with the term RMA since the mid-1990s where I first came across it when working as a government Research Scientist in the R&D arm of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). In those days, it was called DSTO, now DSTG.
The term RMA was widely used then in discussing the possibilities of precision guided smart weapons. It surfaced also in discussion of stealth technology, and now AI.
The presumption in current media commentary, in the West, is that an RMA could and would be initiated only by a Western military, most assuredly and obviously the USA.
The conceit of innate superiority is common in the military history of empires.
When you feel yourself to be superior, the thought of an RMA coming from the other side is simply unthinkable. It is impossible, by definition.
No doubt the Persian King Darius III felt that way when his massive army was routed by Alexander the Great, an inferior force in number, but vastly superior in tactics.
The Romans knew they had a commanding military advantage until they ventured north and encountered the raiding guerilla tactics of the Picts of Caledonia.
When an innately superior force encounters a worthy foe, it simply turns away.
It is better to build a wall and just not go there no more.
Enter the hypersonic missile age RMA
Hypersonic means a multiple of the speed of sound. At sea level, and standard pressure and temperature, sound travels at 331 metres per second.
The speed of sound matters due to the creation of shock waves in air.
These shocks produce drag and vibration as one approaches the sound barrier.
The speed at which this happens depends on altitude and so it is customary to use the Mach number, or multiple of the speed of sound, as the key metric.
Mach 1 is the speed of sound, but the actual speed will vary.
Typical military grade rifles fire bullets at between 650 and 1000 metres per second.
This is supersonic, meaning faster than sound, but not hypersonic (> Mach 5).
As the speed of a projectile, missile, or aircraft, rises the air is displaced in a wake that becomes more sharply defined as the sound barrier is approached.
The original shape of the Bell X-1 experimental rocket-propelled plane was based on a standard 0.50 caliber machine gun bullet because folks knew that was supersonic!
In the above picture, the shock wave is vertical at Mach 1.
It bends around the projectile, as the Mach number rises. The angle made by the shock wave depends on the Mach number, and this is why the physics changes.
The technical challenges of supersonic flight were mastered in the period from 1946 to around 1970 when the space program had fully explored hypersonic flight.
While there is a sonic boom associated with passing the sound barrier, there is no such effect when going twice the speed of sound. The boom is a one off.
However, hypersonic fight is a different regime than supersonic flight because two physical effects become more prominent. The first is simply heating of the aircraft through friction from the passing, highly compressed, airflow. The second is less obvious, but more challenging, from a design perspective. Shock waves form at narrower angles as speed increases. They start to interact around Mach 5.
Once the angle of the shock waves narrows enough, they start to interact with one another which changes how the controls work.
The X-15 controls actually reversed as speed increased!
The development of the X-15 was a very risky endeavor. There was a version with an autopilot that failed in flight due to control irregularities.
This killed test pilot Michael J. Adams.
The famous Neil Armstrong was nearly killed by the same autopilot in an earlier test.
You can read an interesting contemporary root cause analysis here.
Experimental aircraft, like the X-15, established the knowledge to fly safely at speeds above Mach 5. The highest flight of an X-15 was 354,200 feet, and the fastest speed was 4,520 mph, or Mach 6.7. No operating aircraft of today achieves such limits.
The Space Shuttle incorporated such hypersonic materials science and aerodynamic knowledge to complete the risk return from orbit re-entry maneuver.
The above infrared image shows the underside temperature of the Columbia Space Shuttle returning from STS-3 (the third flight), at 184,000 feet and Mach 15.6.
There are three essential engineering challenges with hypersonic flight:
Materials that can withstand physical extremes of temperature
Controls that are effective across the full regime of flight
Communications that will work across all regimes of flight
The last factor is often ignored but relates to the high temperature air flow around any hypersonic vehicle. The air is ionized, producing a plasma halo surrounding the vehicle, which interferes with radio transmissions. The halo is also luminescent.
When you put all of this together, controlled hypersonic flight remains a challenge.
In recent press reports, there has been much mention of ballistic missile technology, and how this is hypersonic. We have had Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) since the first Soviet missile of this type, the R-7 from 1957.
It is easy to forget now, but the U.S.S.R. beat the USA in the early space race.
They were the first to launch an artificial satellite, with Sputnik on 4-Oct-1957, which was preceded, on 21-Aug-1957, by the first successful test of an ICBM, the R-7.
It may surprise modern readers to know that the U.S.S.R. beat the USA to both.
However, this is because the USA then had a major advantage in strategic bomber forces, the legendary Strategic Air Command, which had nuclear armed bombers ready to fly into Soviet airspace, on short notice, 24x7.
The US Airforce of that era did not believe missiles were the future.
The Soviets, not having comparable strategic bomber capability, bet on missiles.
The Soviets were to prove correct, ushering in the ICBM RMA.
What is a ballistic missile?
The most important word in this strategic calculus is ballistic.
Here is the Oxford definition of a ballistic missile:
a missile that is initially powered and guided but falls under gravity on to its target, typically following a high, arching trajectory.
Note that ballistic missiles that leave the Earth’s atmosphere, in order to cover very long-range flights, are typically hypersonic. They travel very fast.
In this age, where all mainstream news reporting is propaganda, of one kind or another, pitching the cause of one side or another, this is great news!
Don’t worry!
We have had hypersonic missiles for decades and the systems to shoot them down.
What is an anti-ballistic missile?
An anti-ballistic missile (ABM) is simply another missile which is designed to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles as they follow their roughly parabolic trajectory.
Note that the target is following a ballistic trajectory.
The anti-ballistic missile need not follow a ballistic trajectory.
It can have an onboard guidance and maneuver system so that it can steer a trajectory towards the target. This is destroyed with an explosive proximity warhead, or by direct hit-to-kill, bullet hits a bullet, impact on the incoming missile warhead.
Here we can see the conundrum facing non-expert media reporters.
The Iron Dome system, as used by Israel to shoot down Hezbollah missiles fired from Southern Lebanon, fires missiles that can maneuver in flight to hit a ballistic missile.
The incoming warheads are following a ballistic trajectory.
Depending on the missile, the incoming velocity can be high, even above Mach-5 in the terminal phase, which would qualify the missile as hypersonic.
However, apart from some aerodynamic wobble, which does complicate a hit-to-kill interception, the incoming missile is not maneuvering.
Under current operating conditions, the majority of anti-ballistic missiles have an advantage over the incoming ballistic missile, in that they can maneuver.
However, the closing velocity of the encounter between the incoming warhead and the defending missile can be extremely high.
The challenge of interception is made harder the higher the speed.
What is a hypersonic glide vehicle?
A hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) is a concept first explored and developed by Eugen Sänger and Irene Bredt in the late 1930s, under the Third Reich R&D program.
In that period, Hitler was obsessed with wonder weapons (wunderwaffe) such as the jet plane, cruise missiles, such as the V-1, and ballistic missiles, such as the V-2.
There is a contemporary conceit that you have to have a particular kind of political system, namely capitalist democracy, to be innovative in science and engineering.
History amply demonstrates that this conceit is pure bunkum.
Sforza, who financed Leonardo da Vinci to explore a Renaissance RMA, with new siege weapons, and concepts such as the helicopter, and the tank, was no angel.
Hitler was not a nice guy intent on spreading democracy around the world.
Stalin was the ultimate dictator whose scientists succeeded in spite of him.
Trust me when I suggest that your chosen political system has nothing to do with how successful you will be with science and engineering innovation.
The Laws of Nature are set by Nature.
She is the ultimate autocrat, and you must obey her rules.
There is no amount of mainstream media propaganda, social change movements, or petitions to your local Member of Parliament, that will change the laws of nature.
The Laws of Nature are the same everywhere in this Universe.
Just because you were born as a slum-kid in Mumbai does not preclude you from a career of profound discovery and innovation in science and engineering.
Nor do you need to spend time in the USA to become an “anointed one”.
These days, you would be better off going to study in China.
Hence, it should surprise nobody that the HGV was a Nazi-era R&D project.
The Silbervogel was a conceptual design for a rocket-powered vehicle that would glide at the edge of the atmosphere on a non-ballistic skipping trajectory.
It was the genius of Sänger to come up with the idea of such gliding flight at the edge of space, but it was his later wife Bredt who verified the concept with calculations.
While this vehicle was never built, it inspired post-War research in the USA, on a class of hypersonic aircraft, like the X-20 Dyno-Soar, which led to the Space Shuttle.
The key concept to understand is that an HGV does not pursue a ballistic trajectory.
Rather than flying into space, only to return in a steep parabolic trajectory, the HGV is designed to prolong the range of an ordinary ballistic missile launch, fly on a shallow bouncing trajectory at the edge of space, and then descend to the target.
A hypersonic glide vehicle is maneuverable throughout the range of flight.
This is the essential difference to a ballistic missile, and the reason for the RMA.
Whither anti-ballistic missile technology?
The essential challenge facing the USA, and its allies, is the efficacy of existing missile systems, such as the Terminal High-Altitude Defence (THAAD) system, and the Navy derived ABMs such as the Standard Missiles 3 (SM-3) and 6 (SM-6).
This challenge extends of Israeli American systems such as Iron Dome, Arrow 3 and David’s Sling. These were designed to be effective in combatting ballistic missile systems with limited terminal phase maneuverability.
The US Congressional Research Service (CRS) recently put out a short explainer Defense Primer: Hypersonic Boost-Glide Weapons to surface the key issues.
Since the trajectory is different, and the vehicle can maneuver throughout the flight, the interception challenge is considerably greater for an HGV.
This is an uncontroversial statement in engineering circles, but verboten commentary in the Western media propaganda deluge of our time. You just cannot say that.
Needless to say, both China and Russia claim to have fielded fully operational HGV missile systems, while the USA has none. They are still in development.
There are shades of 1957 here, when the US Airforce, and SAC, claimed that missiles were and inferior delivery technology for nuclear weapons to a B-36 Peacemaker, a tried-and-true B-47B Stratojet, or the later B-52 Stratofortress.
There would be an entire wing of such bombers on-station 24 hours a day.
The Russian introduction of the ICBM made the US SAC obsolete, although it would remain a powerful deterrent due to then limited Surface-to-Air missile technology.
The adjustment to the Russian-initiated ICBM RMA was an arms race.
I grew up through this era and well remember Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program.
This was a US-initiated RMA in defensive missile technology.
The USA bet the farm on anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems. This is why that nation unilaterally withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in June 2002.
This was due to the US belief that it had a commanding lead in ABM technology.
The idea was to combat any Russian or Chinese ICBM threat by shooting down any incoming ICBM. Russia and China responded in the obvious ways:
They expanded the type and number of their nuclear arsenal to offset intercepts
They pursued vigorous R&D programs in ways to counter ABM technology
Russia and China began to focus on novel designs, like a maneuverable warhead, and faster reaction and response time systems such as hypersonic missiles.
This should come as no surprise.
Advanced anti-ballistic missile technology requires accurate control in the interception phase to maneuver the defending missile onto the target. The problem of evasion for incoming missiles is a more difficult challenge, but of similar character.
It requires attention to:
Materials science for hypersonic missile coatings
Advanced control systems for the terminal phase of maneuver
Sophisticated communications for terminal guidance
These are true also of anti-ballistic missile systems.
It is a missile-on-missile challenge.
Whiter warhead technology?
Early anti-ballistic missile designs were not very accurate in putting the defending missile close enough to the attacking missile to destroy it.
This was solved in a simple way: put a nuclear warhead on the ABM!
As they say in the nuclear missile trade, close is near enough.
For this reason, the standard metric of missile on-target accuracy, the Circular Error Probability (CEP), or radius in which 50% of warheads could be expected to fall, was around 250 metres. With a nuclear explosion, this is close enough to spell doom.
For reasons related to guidance and sensing, it is easier to guide a missile onto a target that has been tracked for a long time, especially when it is ballistic.
For a tracked ballistic missile, you can literally calculate the future trajectory.
For a 1970s era ICBM, the standard countermeasure to an ABM defense was to use a so-called Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV).
This is a mouthful, but the idea is to pack many warheads into the ICBM and then send each on its merry way when you are still outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
The contemporary ABM systems, like THAAD, are designed to counter this threat.
Since the ICBM trajectory is ballistic, the ideal intercept point is pre-MIRV separation, but you could cope, in principle, with a later intercept of each warhead.
The success of this strategy depends on your ability to track the incoming missile and to predict its future location, in real time, so you can guide a hit-to-kill vehicle.
This is much easier for warheads with limited maneuver.
The key point is that a ballistic missile is easier to track and hit.
The ABM systems of today maneuver in flight to hit the target.
The anti-ABM challenge is to maneuver in flight to avoid being hit.
The role played by kinetic energy
For hit-to-kill ABM warheads the role played by kinetic energy is important.
The closing velocity of the hit-to-kill vehicle and the incoming missile warhead could easily be Mach 10 or higher. Let’s do the numbers on a 100 kg hit to kill vehicle.
The speed of sound varies with altitude.
The altitude between around 70km and 90km is where stratospheric dynamic soaring is possible. For simplicity, let us call the speed of sound 300 metres/second.
This corresponds to about 70km, with Mach 10 being 3km/second.
Using this kinetic energy calculator, with inputs of 100kg and 3km/second the kinetic energy of our ABM warhead is about 450 MJ (the energy unit is called a Mega Joule). The explosive energy of 1kg of TNT is 4.184 MJ. Our 100kg warhead, which could be made of pure marshmallow, will strike with the energy release of 107.5 kg TNT!
This is the other way in which hypersonic projectiles lead to an RMA.
You do not need complex fusing, or explosives, to destroy a target.
Hit anything with a payload of marshmallows at Mach-10 and it is gone!
This is counterintuitive, but one reason hit-to-kill ABMs are effective.
Putting it all together for a genuine RMA
We don’t know if the Oreshnik missile that was fired at the Yuzhmash underground missile factory in Ukraine combined all necessary elements for an HGV.
However, the Russians have sure positioned it as such.
Of course they would!
That is how propaganda works. Instill fear and chaos among the enemy.
The problem is that disinformation cuts both ways.
The Ukrainian government has classified all information regarding the damage at the Yuzhmash plant. We have all seen the videos of the missile strike.
It is generally accepted that the missile contained six warheads, each of which had a total of six submunitions, all of which struck the same target area.
There is little visible damage at surface, and the lack of visible signs, plus explosions has led some commentators to declare the missile to have “dud” warheads.
However, the closing velocity of the warheads has been estimated from the travel time below a visible nighttime cloud base at 600m. That time was 0.15 seconds.
This is about 4km/second or Mach 12 at sea level.
The kinetic energy goes as the square of the velocity.
The resultant TNT equivalent for each 100kg of “dud warhead” is 191 kg. The most powerful conventional explosive is HMX. This has a relative effectiveness of 1.70 meaning that 1kg of HMX has the detonation energy of 1.7kg of TNT.
A 100kg 4km/second “dud warhead” as the detonation energy of 112kg of HMX.
You do not need explosives in a hypersonic kinetic energy weapon.
Furthermore, there is no precision fusing of the explosive needed.
Kinetic energy weapons dump their energy on the target.
This fact has been entirely lost on the mainstream media!
There is indeed little satellite evidence of major damage at the Ukrainian plant.
This is what one should expect, since the kinetic energy penetrator will quickly pass through any roof, the floor below, and the floors below that.
The true damage assessment at the Dnipro factory site requires an underground visit.
That is not possible because all information from the site is classified.
You do not classify the damage assessment if there is no damage.
The damage is unknown, but considerable kinetic energy was dumped on the target. The effects are similar to meteorite impact. The key difference with a conventional explosion is that the shockwave is directed along the path of the projectile.
It is not like a spherical detonation wave, but more like a shaped charge.
This is more akin to an armor piercing sabot round than an exploding bomb.
The true damage assessment is only known in Kiev and Washington D.C.
Conclusion
This was an attempt to survey they basic issues raised by hypersonic missiles.
The key point that I am trying to communicate is that speed is simply one dimension of this emerging Revolution in Military Affairs.
There are other aspects, such as connected warfare, drones and artificial intelligence.
Hypersonic projectiles, missiles and aircraft have been around for over fifty years.
What is different now is the controllability of hypersonic flight.
This is the true revolution underway.
While the USA, and its partners, is the undisputed leader in ABM systems, that are useful for combatting ballistic missile threats, Russia and China have invested very heavily to counter this capability with hypersonic maneuver.
Hypersonic flight is demanding for materials science and control systems.
However, China and Russia both have competent science and engineering.
The USA chose not to invest heavily in hypersonic R&D due to the ABM edge.
That may prove to have been a strategic mistake.
Paradoxically, that may reduce the present appetite for escalation in Washington.
When you think you are invulnerable you will take extraordinary risks.
Once you understand your own mortality, you are less likely to do so.
Having had my own recent encounter with mortality I wish for a peaceful world.
I wish you a successful investment outcome, and rest-assured, I think that this possible missile gap may move the superpowers to start talking again.
This is what happened during the 1960s ICBM arms race.
Eventually, it led to the 1972 ABM treaty.
We must persuade our leaders that a nuclear war has no winners.
Everybody loses. We all lose big. The loss is permanent.
NB: I fixed some spelling errors and mis-remembered Persian Kings :-)
Excellent article, finally cutting through a lot of noise in the mainstream / public domain...