The Hunt for the Red Pluto-ber

Russia has been working on a number of weapons to circumvent the American ballistic missile defense system. They apparently have more faith in the capability than we do. Or less in their ballistic missiles. Either way, the Russians have come up with some pretty crazy things to deal with these defenses. Almost all of their solutions, are as expected, to delivery nuclear weapons.

Two of the craziest of them were the nuclear armed strategic torpedo/unmanned underwater vehicle called the Poseidon (originally called Status-6) and the other was the Burevestnik, a nuclear powered cruise missile. Yes, nuclear powered. We'll get to that. The Poseidon is meant to be fired off and have it swim for thousands of miles to its target, such as a port city, and then either lie in wait or detonate on arrival. The Russians, true to form, have been talking about using it on US aircraft carrier battle groups. The other weapon is even crazier.



The Burevestnik (Storm Petrol, a type of sea bird), as stated, is a nuclear powered nuclear carrying cruise missile. It does carry a nuclear warhead. It also uses a nuclear reactor as a ramjet where it heats the air passing through to make it expand faster creating thrust. The US considered the design in the 1960s and 1970s in Project Pluto. It was considered too insane to actually use and was abandoned. The Russians decided it was not insane because it gives them effectively, if they can make it work, unlimited range. The nuclear reaction in the reactor could keep the aircraft in the air for years. The downside is that it spews chunks of the reactor everywhere. That was actually a design feature in the original Project Pluto, btw, laying waste to the country side through supersonic shockwaves and leaving radioactive fallout all over the place. Nice, huh? The point though is that the missile could be fired south over Kazakhstan and then go all the way south over Antarctica before coming all the way up to hit the US in say, Florida.

The Russians have been testing this like crazy. Between November 2017 and February 2018, the Russians reportedly fired off four missiles. They all 'crashed.' From the sounds of it, these may have been launcher tests rather than tests of the missile itself. The times and ranges of the flight are pretty off if the reactor was actually on. However, if this was a case where a mass simulator (an inert body like aluminum) was being used with the rocket intended to launch the cruise missile up to ramjet speeds, then those tests make sense. After all, the russians did release a video of one of the cruise missiles followed by chase planes. You are not going to do that if it was a 22 second flight.

However! It may be on the 4th test, they attempted to launch a live reactor carrying cruise missile. The Warzone is [url=http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23058/russia-is-hunting-for-its-crashed-nuclear-powered-cruise-missile-and-the-u-s-might-be-too]reporting[/u rl] the Russians are sending ships to recover the missile from the Barents Sea. If this was a mass simulator, who cares? However, if it is a real missile, then the US and others might want to recover it. They sent a ship to recover a Mig and a sukhoi lost during the Russian flights off their carrier in support of their campaign in Syria for fear of what the US (or others) might find out from the wrecks salvaged from the seafloor. This would be worth about a million times more.

And the US has the capability to retrieve the missile wreck if they want to. That's in part what the USS Jimmy Carter, a heavily modified Seawolf class, is for.

So, we may have a race for whoever recovers the missile first.

You might call it the Hunt for the Red Pluto-ber.

a reply to: anzha

The torpedo makes sense but the nuclear cruise missile is just stupid. S&F...

Although I can remember the stories of the Russians sending troops to the front line without weapons WW2 and if they turned around to run they were shot by their own officers.. Maybe just another dooms day last chance scenario if the cruise missile would ever be used ?

a reply to: 727Sky

The problem with Poseidon is communication. If you're sending off a nuke on a month long cruise, then how do you know its not been lost or compromised. Do you feel comfortable leaving something sitting like that? The oceans aren't noted for being mega friendly. It's crazy, but only somewhat.

The Burevestnik is just insane. Outright, Chiroptera droppings insane. I would agree it is an end of the world weapon, except for one thing.

The Russians have a doctrine where they escalate to deescalate. They believe if they fire off a nuke and use it, it will cause everyone to backdown. They honestly believe this will cause the world, whomever is fighting, to pause whatever war they are in with the Russians to pause and stop the whole fight. The Burevestnik could be used as a whole Mandarin move ("you'll never see me coming...") to pull that off. Or the Poseidon, for that matter. The problem is the West, or at least the US, would respond in kind and it would quickly and wildly escalate. Then I suppose we'll see how many of the Russian missile actually work.

a reply to: anzha

Yep I agree.. Everytime I read something like this I think of the guy who said, "WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones" ! Let us all hope posturing and the monkey dance is all that ever becomes of all these weapons of death.

how about a nuclear powered tunneling machine?

www.dailymail.co.uk...

The Soviets once built a nuclear-powered land submarine to attack the United States during the Cold War, a new report has revealed.

Code-named the Battle Mole, the subterranean machine had a titanium body with a pointed nose and stern, and used a drill heated to extreme temperatures to power through solid ground by melting the material in front of it.

A new investigation into the vehicle reports Russian forces hoped to use it to attack and destroy key US military facilities, including underground missile silos, and may have allowed for the subsurface delivery of nuclear bombs.

But while a prototype showed promise, a catastrophic nuclear reactor failure caused it to explode during a test dig, forcing officials to abandon the project in the 1960s.

aka The Underminer

originally posted by: ElGoobero
how about a nuclear powered tunneling machine?

www.dailymail.co.uk...

The Soviets once built a nuclear-powered land submarine to attack the United States during the Cold War, a new report has revealed.

Code-named the Battle Mole, the subterranean machine had a titanium body with a pointed nose and stern, and used a drill heated to extreme temperatures to power through solid ground by melting the material in front of it.

A new investigation into the vehicle reports Russian forces hoped to use it to attack and destroy key US military facilities, including underground missile silos, and may have allowed for the subsurface delivery of nuclear bombs.

But while a prototype showed promise, a catastrophic nuclear reactor failure caused it to explode during a test dig, forcing officials to abandon the project in the 1960s.

aka The Underminer

The US patented something similar - it would heat liquid lithium beyond the melting point of rock and pump it in front of the nuclear drill. The glassified rock would cool down and be extremely smooth.

a reply to: 727Sky

Einstein?

a reply to: anzha

I ddon’t don’t know about the cruise missile, but somebody recently did a thread on the Poseidon torpedo. Living on the WC, that thing scares the bejeezus outta me

a reply to: 727Sky

The alarming bit for me is they are testing this in the open air repeatedly. If they use it in anger, there's not much worrying because its the end of the world scenario. OTOH, flying it around...the russians are not noted for their care for the environment.

a reply to: anzha

January 29, 2019 test.

thediplomat.com...

If designed properly the radiation risk is pretty small (from overflight, not detonation). You just need to heat the air. Pluto decided to skip that because you can save weight and get more heat and a tiny bit of extra mass into the airflow if you just expose the reactor mass directly to the air flow. So it was lighter, and had more thrust. Either method would never fly here, but Russia doesn't have the same priorities we do. It gives them a pretty unique capability. I wouldn't be completely shocked to learn we quietly have something similar stashed away as a doomsday device. Noone really cares about the small amount of fallout from overflight in a scenario where nuclear weapons are being employed.