The missile failure was likely due to a defect in an aluminum coating. Mitch McConnell's support for special favors to Russian aluminum production in Kentucky should help Putin fix that problem. The products of the Kentucky aluminum plant can then be shipped to Russia via Chinese shipping interests run by McConnell's wife.
Do you want to vote against any of this in upcoming elections? Could be hard because McConnell isn't much interested in protecting our elections from Russian interference...for obvious, selfish reasons.
57
"Isotope power source for a liquid fueled rocket engine", no, that is not confusing, rather quite telling. They're also known as "Poodle thrusters", from the US efforts to develope them in Project Poodle. They use a radioactive isotope as a heat source, similar to RTG's used in space exploration, but instead of producing electricity, they use the heat from the decaying isotope to heat a liquid propellant and with that produce a small amount of thrust. Compared to chemical rockets specific impulse can double.
19
First North Korea, now Russia. This administration's lack of a coherent and reasonable foreign policy coupled with a love of despots is leading us into a nuclear abyss that we may not be able to emerge from. Trump's hubris is greater every day.
23
@Barbara: Nuclear weapons will apparently be the death of our species.
4
Conventional wisdom holds that SDI was never fully deployed and, for the most part, was a victim of Clinton Era budget cutting. GW Bush made small efforts to breathe life back into it, but it was never fully deployed. It appears that Russia has been very busy developing a weapons system that would be impervious to a working SDI system, which would only make sense if, after the election of Donald Trump and his new openness with sharing intelligence with them, they somehow stumbled across a very closely held national secret: the US has a fully functioning SDI system and a serious effort was made at disinformation across multiple administrations to not disclose this intelligence. Russia knows that ICBMs that enter space may be neutralized and they are quickly now trying to implement a weapon that counters this real threat.
6
>>> "It appears that Russia has been very busy developing a weapons system that would be impervious to a working SDI system, which would only make sense if, after the election of Donald Trump and his new openness with sharing intelligence with them, they somehow stumbled across a very closely held national secret: the US has a fully functioning SDI system and a serious effort was made at disinformation across multiple administrations to not disclose this intelligence."
Not least in the long list of damaging and dangerous results of the Trump administration is the degree to which vast swathes of our population have been lured into conspiranoid fantasy.
I blame your teachers.
10
"arms experts have long regarded his effort as part fantasy, using a technology the United States tried and failed to make work in the 1950s and 1960s"
... so it's a fantasy to try to create technology that we didn't manage 50 YEARS AGO? I think it's silly NOT to try to pursue technology we couldn't manage half a century ago.
That said, I also believe that we need to invest those resources towards better understanding and defending ourselves against the clever way Russia upended this country with social media.
11
To calculate your own exposure to radiation from the Nevada test site, use the handy US Government calculator provided at:
https://radiationcalculators.cancer.gov/fallout/
This calculator estimates the radiation dose received by your thyroid gland from radionuclides in fallout from nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site (NTS). In addition, the calculator estimates your risk of developing thyroid cancer from that exposure. This calculator also provides an estimate of probability of causation, for individuals who have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer.
To use this calculator, you will need to supply information to help characterize your exposure to radioactive fallout, including:
--your gender and date of birth;
--the states and counties that you lived in between 1951 and 1982; and
--the primary types and amounts of milk that you consumed at different ages.
Enjoy!
7
I just can't believe Russia would hide any information about a nuclear accident.
hmmmn, where has that delayed acknowledgment happened before...
5
This sounds like the old cancelled US project, NERVA. What could possibly go wrong? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA
3
US policy has been unrelenting in its aggressive hostility toward Russia, from the moment the Soviet Union collapsed. There was a brief period during the reign of the drunken puppet, Boris Yeltsin, when it was convenient for our foreign policy establishment to pretend to be friendly. That ended when the nationalist, Putin, who refused to run a client state for the West, came to power.
Our government has surrounded Russia with hostile forces and weapons, insisted upon expanding NATO to Russia's very borders, despite having promised Gorbachev not to do so, and in every way possible worked to harass and weaken that nation. And our leaders have spent decades unapologetically demonizing the nation and its officials.
We have been exactly the opposite of good guys in this drama -- we have been unrepentant bad guys and have only ourselves to thank for the predictably hostile responses to our provocations.
5
Meanwhile we'll just ignore 1) Occupation of Georgia, 2) Annexation of Crimea, 3) Menacing and attempting to subvert the Baltic States' governments. 4) Attempting to subvert other former East Bloc governments, 5) Conducting and supporting illegal military operations in eastern Ukraine, 6) Interfering with and attempting to destabilize Western European governments and elections 7) Interfering with and attempting to disrupt the US electoral process. Yes, how mean of the US to trample in Putin's good intentions and threaten poor, peace loving Russia. But there's hope! The current White House joins Putin in calling this behavior "nasty" and "not nice".
37
@Phillip Usher You nailed! Thank you.
9
Why not? After dismembering Serbia, occupation of Iraq, illegal military action in Syria, attack in Libya, menacing Ukraine and meddling in the Ukrainian election, after illegal support of Saudi military action in Yemen, the US is not in position to lecture Russia about the good behavior. And by the way, Russia does not occupy Georgia.
8
What's the Democrat's plan for dealing with Putin?
Thank you, Mr Trump for trying to protect the country.
11
The Democrats plan is the same, effective one used by Republicans and Democrats for the prior fifty years. It will work again once the traitor Trump is gone.
58
@Amy Really? How many petals do you have remaining on that daisy? A review of the free and international press and the expressed anxieties of former intelligence and foreign service experts would show anxieties on their part. Trump is an enabler of Russian bad intentions.
37
We haven't been in this much danger in a very long time. Trump is dangerous.
24
Sorry Russian people, and citizens of the US, you can't eat nukes, but when your children's stomachs start growling, tell them about your country's massive nuclear arsenal; that should calm them down.
13
It is better than American bombs raining on their poor heads as on the heads of Iraqi children.
@yulia. It's August. Doesn't the FSB allow summer vacations?
16
@Phillip Usher Does CIA?
1
I trust absolutely zero governments in this world to maintain anything but the basest, most self serving interests at the expense of all that is truly worth protecting.
It astounds me that modern human beings are still developing weapons of mass destruction or expecting war to solve a single problem.
Disgusting.
I realize this comment will likely be as well received as a Marianne Williamson book at gun show.
20
An “isotope power source for a liquid fueled rocket engine” suggests that they're doing something to the fuel to make it more potent; to burn longer or to produce more thrust.
1
@W The tech was looked into before, the whole idea was the thought that yo just need to heat the air for a turbine to work, and it does not much matter HOW you heat the air in the end cycle. If there was a high enough source of heat that was not constantly damped out by the rush of cold air then once the missile is in flight it has minimum fuel needs, and can just rely on the isotope heat source for constant power, adding higher energy fuel if higher course or attack stages are imminent, course changes or the like, but something built like a combination of predator drone and cruise missile with an everlasting power source would be bad.
They are just an accident awaiting a time and place to happen in. They should be denied the chance.
3
If it is a fission-powered cruise missile, then as this thing is flying over the earth evading other missiles on way to its target it is spewing highly radioactive exhaust on the rest of the other peaceful countries below it? Is that right?
14
Biaknour 1960, K-19 1961, Chernobyl 1986, Kursk 2000, Losharik 2019, Nyonoksa 2019. Because..........Russia.
7
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945. Bikini atoll, 1946-1958. Nevada Test Site, 1951-1980? (100 atmospheric detonations). And so on.
Because . . .?
3
@Douglas. Forgot Tsar Bomba 1961.
5
What is the best case scenario for those who now seek to refuel a nuclear arms race? Try as I might, it is difficult to envision any scenario that might adequately benefit a hypothetical victor.
6
Some friendly advice from a friend of PT.
It would really be a shame if something tragic were to happen should someone comment on this obviously unfortunate accident in a way which even remotely criticized the wonderful relationship PT has established and continues to nurture with Mr Putin.
Not saying tragedy would necessarily strike but, ya never know about coincidences or connections. Take care of yourself.
7
First the president withdraws us from a nuclear treaty that would have limited this kind of testing, and then he removes a non-partisan official from leadership of what is supposed to be a non-partisan agency (our intelligence community). You would have to be both blind and deaf to not see that at some point over the past 3 years Putin gave Trump a checklist of some kind and he is completing it one objective at a time. Everything else the the president is doing is just to distract from what is really going on.
545
The article clearly stated this type of missile is not covered by any existing treaty. So the Trump decision to cancel the treaty has zero effect on the development of this weapon.
30
@USA Too
Trump doesn’t need a checklist from Putin. He has totally private phone calls as often as he likes with Putin and his other boyfriends. Oligarchs love the casual mob style for business.
That private calls are allowed here is ironically suicidal to democracy.
20
@chris Hynes
You're nitpicking... look at the forest beyond the trees.
Every action he takes hurts us. It either takes money from us with tariffs and tax legislation and an impossible debt; weakens our diplomacy with broken treaties, arguing against our alliances; divides the populous with radical rhetoric; destroys trust in institutions like journalism, the courts, and just government in general. Or exploits our land and resources so we have nothing to fall back on when we really need it.
Whether you agree with his politics or not, it's undeniable that every single action and word he has taken has been controversial... and that is NOT Trump Derangement Syndrome which simply doesn't exist. We seem deranged because we combat everything... did you ever stop to think that everything he does is an attack on us... and that we're just defending?
He may not be working for Putin... but he sure as heck tripped and fell right into everything Putin has ever wanted.
47
Trump has made it more dangerous for all of us on the planet, first and foremost by denying climate change, then with his refusal to allow America to be part of any denuclearization treaty which most previous Administrations endorsed. I hold him responsible for this Russian firing.
374
@JHM
Is Trump also responsible for the annexation of Crimea? Is Putin responsible for anything he does?
5
@JHM
Distractions-R-Rus
Russia's nuclear-powered cruise missile, a throwback to crazy-sounding Cold War weapons tech, is back. Whether it'll ever work is a separate issue.
The Burevestnik (“Storm Petrel”) is designed to evade U.S. defenses, flying for hours or even days to exploit holes in missile defense networks that most weapons can’t reach. Russia hadn't tested the weapon in nearly a year—until last week, that is. The missile is known to the U.S. intelligence community as the KY30, or the SSC-X-9 “Skyfall.”
"Hey, look over here at my shiny object!"
If you want to know what Russia has really developed, look at what they don't want to talk about, so much.
There have been cryptic clues over the years that Perimeter still exists. Which illustrates one of the curiosities of this system, which is that the Soviet Union kept its existence secret from the American enemy whom it was supposed to deter. If Russia is now discussing Perimeter publicly, that’s reason for the rest of us to worry.
Viktor Yesin, who commanded Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces in the 1990s, spoke of Perimeter/Dead Hand:
Yesin: "The Perimeter system is functioning, it has even been improved. But when it works, we will have little left - we can only launch those missiles that will survive after the first attack of the aggressor."
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-dead-hand-nuclear-doomsday-weapon-back-38492
3
@JHM It all comes full circle: Putin hires Trump, Trump cancels treaty, Putin gets unlimited missile testing, America can't respond without irradiating the rest of Nevada, Putin has unstoppable missile and wins!
5
I think our competent agencies already know a lot about that explosion (via satellites, reconnaissance planes, and spies on the ground). But somehow, they are also silent about it. Probably because it is serious. But that makes us no better than Russians in how information is hidden from the public.
17
There is zero indication that the Chernobyl nuclear accident “killed thousands”. US gun killings, auto accidents, and the opioid epidemic “killed thousands”, but not Chernobyl according to the WHO’s thorough report on the true scale of the accident.
The Times is guilty of bad science reporting in a number of instances, from comprehensive to casual, from Bret Stephens’ climate denialism, to delusional reporting on wind and solar energy, and to nuclear scaremongering whenever the opportunity arises.
11
@RJB
Baloney. Thousands indeed died from cancer related to the to the Chernobyl nuclear explosion.
151
@RJB
Initial estimates of long term fatalities were on the 10’s of thousands. An extensive WHO report put the number later at 4000.
35
The best scientific consensus stands at 54 imeadiate deaths, and an estimated 4000 deaths from increased cancer risk. There are estimates far higher, and some lower, but if you are relying on reports that say it is not thousands, you are relying on fringe science.
30
Let us posit that the Russians had their hydrazine fueled booster burn and then cascade into the engine metal burning which caused a catastrophic fuel containment field failure and explosion on the test pad aboard the vessel. Normally, such a launch fireball would not involve the dispersal of radioactive fuel. The rocket motor pulse units contain chemical explosives, but there is plenty of explosive potential in the hydrazine booster fuel. Even if all the pulse units exploded simultaneously there would only be a 1 psi overpressure of the 4 metal alloys used out to 300 m and a lethal shrapnel hazard out to 2,000 m. A chemical rocket booster burn could aerosolize radioactive plutonium from booster units and create a downrange fallout hazard. The solution is to put the launch pad over a pool of water about 10 meters deep or on a ship. In event of fire, collapse the pad into the pool. The fire would be extinguished and any escaped plutonium will be contained in the water. Many of the pulse units can be recovered and reused - which is what is going on now.
2
On Sept. 24, 1996, the United States and the world's other major nuclear powers signed a treaty to end all testing and development of nuclear weapons. Do you believe all nations having nuclear capabilities are being good boys and girls?
Man will self destruct whether by global warming climate or a global nuclear holocaust. May God protect us from our selves.
I've heard of the ultimate "doomsday bomb". Humans use most of their resources for their preoccupation with destruction, and that has impeded man's ability to cure diseases such as Alzheimer's, Ebola, Polio, Lupus Erythematosus, Influenza, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, Diabetes, HIV/AIDS, Asthma, Cancer, and the common cold.
11
Didn't this occur just about the time Trump said he spoke to Putin to offer assistance fighting Siberian wildfires? Why would Trump lie about something so easily disproved?
5
Not an "accident;" it was a failure. We should be grateful.
3
Despite all the human intelligence, power to reason and the resulting wisdom, as species we are building systems that have the potential to destroy our home, the planet. It is commonsense to be evolve in a manner that will protect the planet, when given the fact that a human life averages only 80 odd years. The super powers are all countering commonsense and it is a failure of collective leadership!
I wrote something along these lines when the story had 33 comments and I was surprised that NYT's algorithm filtered it!!
Is there any thing wrong in what I said? or Talking as a earthling is considered an outlier? I wonder...
6
Are the Russkies still working on the doomsday machine? If they are, we need to get Dr. Strangelove to figure out how to counter it! Maybe he’s already in an underground bunker below the White House, preparing for the evacuation of our great leaders.
1
In normal times this story would appear far above the tale of a rich pedophile commuting suicide in jail.
26
@Alexandra Hamilton Agree. Just shows how low we've fallen, doesn't it.
2
The USA abrogated the ABM antimissile treaty the Iran nuclear deal, the INF intermediate range nuclear forces treaty. The USA has placed first strike anti missile missiles in Rumania and Poland on Russia's borders, moved its and NATO forces up to Russia's borders and surrounds Russia with military bases. USA placed THAAD missiles in South Korea and surrounds China with military bases, is pivoting its forces from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific. The USA is fighting at least 14 secret wars according to the Times, among others. So far these wars have been waged against small, poor countries, devastating them. The USA has decided to spend over 1 trillion dollars on upgrading its nuclear arsenal. Congress, with most Republicans and Democrats voting for, just gave the Trump administration another giant iincrease in the known military budget. The adversaries that the USA is threatening are responding in whatever manner they can. As Martin Luther King, Jr., said so many years ago, the USA is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. The USA is and has been the leader of the arms races. When the people of the USA finally decide to stop the wars and gargantuan weapons budget and end the hegemony of the Military Industrial Complex, the pressure for Russia and China to defend themselves against Number 1 aggressor will diminish and we can negotiate nuclear-weapons abolition and finally abide by Article 6 of the NPT and the Charter of the United Nations. It's up to us.
5
Existentially, choices are being made. Nuclear Armageddon sooner, or ecological collapse later. Time to take a stand folks!
10
Bombs for peace, workfare for engineers. There hasn't been a good world war in almost 75 years. Is it working?
1
I would stay away from the fish and game specials around Nenoksa for the next 24,000 years.
17
Logic dictates that the greater the number and types of nuclear weapons, the higher the probability that one of them will one day lead to a catastrophy.
Either onsite, such as the September. 1980 liquid fuel explosion inside the silo of a U.S. Air Force LGM-25C Titan II ICBM loaded with a 9 megaton W-53 Nuclear Warhead near Little Rock. Arkansas resulting in th he death of one airman and the wounding of 21 others.
Through a false alarm, such as that which occurred in September, 1983 when a possible nuclear war was prevented only by the level-headed reaction of Soviet Air Defense Forces Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov who refused to launch a nuclear counter-attack on the U.S. even though the Soviet computerized early warning system indicated that five Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched from an American base. A false alarm apparently set off when a Soviet satellite mistook the sun’s reflection off the tops of clouds for a missile launch.
Or, the failure of a fail-safe system triggered to automatically launch a counter-strike such as is apparently installed on the Russian "Poseidon" nuclear underwater drone mentioned in this article.
These are just a few of the reasons why nuclear non-proliferation agreements are necessary; to benefit all sides. Because luck can only last for so long before it runs out.
10
This states that the death toll from Chernobyl was in the 1000s. The official direct death toll was under 100, with the cause of other deaths being speculative.
1
Yes, but it is generally accepted that the official death toll is in no way accurate and that many subsequent deaths from cancers, leukemia etc were a direct result of exposure to the radiation. Russia will never accept those higher numbers but most of the rest of the world does.
8
Actually, the research was done by the UN and it found only 50 death that could be attributed to Chernobyl. It is also should be noted that the affected areas are not only in Russia, but in Belorussia and Ukraine. And even if you do not trust the Russian Government, why wouldn't you trust the Belorussia government or Ukrainian one? What motive do they have to hide casualties?
1
I imagine Trump’s next broad smile thumb’s up photo op will be with his trusted pal Putin. As if to say, “Great job, Putin... toward a day when Russia overpowers America! Those American suckers. Land of unwanted immigrants.”
If Trump isn’t a traitor to his own country, I don’t know who is. He should be busy building America infrastructure to help our communities where most live, (not the border) and stop hurting us with dangerous rhetoric, and cozying up to enemies.
Vote Democrats into every branch of government!
Make America sane again.
11
The Russians like Trump are nothing but liars. We need to cripple their economy so they don’t have any money to continue their research.
6
Chernobyl is not in northern Russia.
2
Hopefully there was an evil malign cyberwar American involvement in this ' tragic' accident.
Chernobyl?
Is anyone in the Trump Administration not beholden to the Kremlin?
3
I asked Vlad about the weapons development. He looked me firmly in the eye and said said “fake news comrade, fake news”; I believe him too.
9
Russian reactors under the bed! Again!
4
Sure makes you worry with Trump so beholden to Putin.
3
Russian rocket technology = bluster; no muster;
1
Hey, if Chernobyl is in Russia or Ukraine Does not matter,, I was there camping, sleeping on the ground up in the north of Sweden (Sundsval), where where radiation from that incident was first detected, and I’m doing fine! I just wonder why everybody keeps flashing their highbeams at me at… Like I’m driving without my headlights on?
2
The Trump-GOP-Steve Bannon-inspired Train Wreak continues.....what could possibly go wrong?
3
Why no link to the claim of "many coverups" especially regarding a lost nuke near Japan?
2
Amazing all the hate getting dumped on Trump and Putin is the one who is developing a nuclear missile and just poisoned the area around the failed test. Yea, let’s have Biden show us how he would handle this. Bet any dumb idea would be applauded by the NYT editorial board.
3
It's the Russkies. We have no way of knowing what went on without some boots on the ground.
Publicly available satellite is exactly that. So there's no shortage of redit "investigators" who'll analyze it 6 ways to sundown. DoD certainly won't say anything meaningful as they don't want to tip their hand.
Tell us when you really know.
1
First, indoor plumbing.
4
Russia should rather focus on its average life expectancy (which is 66 for males).
Leave the nuclear weapons to the real Superpower.
3
@Nick The US should focus on its average life expectancy (which is 78 years, compared to 82 for Canada or 83 for Switzerland).
3
The US also has the highest maternal mortality rate of any industrialized country at 23.8 percent per 100,000 births. The CDC estimates the 20 to 50 percent of these deaths are preventable. Many women have no prenatal medical care because the can’t afford it, which shows that, to some people, babies are more precious than the women who carry them for nine months.
2
The five Russian nuclear engineers killed in the explosion while testing a new missile are hailed as heroes and to be given posthumous state awards. Such a missile, if successfully developed, could fly intricate courses and stay in the air for many hours as it hunted a target. It sounds too good to be true.
Sergei Kirienko, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, attended the funeral. He heaped praise on the five engineers, saying the engineers took the risk of sacrificing their lives while conducting the tests.
In the West, scientists calculate the chances of success before they take any risk of pursuing further, for fear of public outrage in the event of a disastrous accident.
In Russia, the pressure from the Kremlin is enormous. Risks need to be taken at all costs.
Last month, a top-secret Russian nuclear submersible was badly damaged in a fire in the Barents Sea, killing 14 high-ranking naval officers. Monday also marked the 19th anniversary of the sinking of the Kursk, a Russian nuclear-powered submarine. All 118 crew members aboard died after the vessel sank to the bottom, as the Russian navy refused foreign offers of help.
Putin, newly elected as president, came under heavy criticism for continuing a vacation. It came at a time when there was still press freedom in Russia.
40
To be fair, the American Navy with all their concerns about safety are not so accident free. in 2017 USS Fitzgerald collided with cargo shop resulted in the death of 7 sailors, two months later another accident involved USS McCain took lives another 10 sailors. And that in the most expensive Navy in the World.
Viktor Yesin, who commanded Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces in the 1990s, spoke of Perimeter/Dead Hand during an interview last month in the Russian newspaper Zvezda [Google English translation here]. Yesin said that if the United States starts deploying intermediate-range missiles in Europe, Russia will consider adopting a doctrine of a preemptive nuclear strike. But he also added this:
Zvezda: "Will we have time to answer if the flight time is reduced to two to three minutes when deploying medium-range missiles near our borders? In this version, all hope is only on Perimeter. And for a retaliatory strike. Or was Perimeter also disassembled for parts?
Yesin: "The Perimeter system is functioning, it has even been improved. But when it works, we will have little left - we can only launch those missiles that will survive after the first attack of the aggressor."
1
Discounting Russian engineering capabilities could be dangerous, though.
They built a rocket engine that we believed could not be done. The design and their rocket engines are still in use today.
3
I'm so happy Trump is getting rid of all those experienced, knowledgeable career officers at our intelligence agencies (like Dan Coates) and is replacing them with political toadies who will tell him (and the American public) only what Trump wants to hear. Making America great by turning our once proudly patriotic intelligence community into the Ministry of Propaganda.
15
" the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in 1986, which killed thousands"
I believe this runs against international studies of the disaster.
@Larry Kennedy It depends very much how distant and delayed a death can be traced backed to the explosion. Epidemiological studies, which can not put a name and date on the deaths, returned estimates as high as 500,000. Just a small increase in the probability of cancer over a European population of 700 billion over many years can result in such a high count.
3
I have read many comments saying that the Russians are winning the latest version of the nuclear arms race. NO ONE wins here. How much radiation will be discharged into our already polluted atmosphere before we are either wiped off the earth or cooler, more sensible heads prevail and we figure out how to work together to save the human race and the planet it lives on?
5
It is incorrect to say Chernobyl "killed thousands". Less than a 100 were killed outright or in the immediate aftermath. Future cancer deaths may indeed number in the thousands, but would be difficult to. prove
2
@John Hobson Epidemiological studies place the long-term toll because of increased cancer prevalence at 500,000. If you need mathematical proof, then the number is 0.
so the fatalities in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are only counted by the initial blast estimates?
3
What is Trump doing to protect our country from Russian aggression, whether an electoral cyberattack or with nuclear weapons?
Absolutely nothing. The Republican party is equally complicit with their silence.
5
I hope cooler heads will prevail, but I’m not seeing any. N. Korea, Russia, China ... Trump merely encourages them when he gets “beautiful” letters from them. Fortunately, the stable genius has his son-in-law to turn to in a crisis.
3
I am naive. I think all of this is a waste of time by the US, China, and Russia. All have many nuclear weapoms, many ways to fire them, and enough to decimate the world a gazillion times over.
If there is nothing left of the US, China, or Russia except a nuclear halo wasteland, or any combination, what will the world be like anyway for the remaining countries? A lot less than what we started with. A lot less. There is no winning in nuclear wars.
3
@Mark That about describes Europe after wwii. That didn't prevent people from going there. Escalation was gradual from both sides and caused by mistakes, overreaction and internal politics. The big winners of WWII were none of the original contenders, it was Russia and the US.
LOL Misfortune for scientists working feverishly to make our world more dangerous? Not much to feel bad about in this story. The missiles’ only potential purpose would be to threaten or destroy our country and citizens. Let’s hope for worse accidents to come.
3
Reminds me of the USAF Minuteman missile launching out of a C-5 during flight. It was a program designed to make the Soviets worry about an air launched ICBM.
I met one of the C-5 pilots that flew those missions. He lives here in Las Vegas. He said it took several attempts to get just one successful launch and that it was totally a technical capability demonstration to scare the Soviets.
We did a lot of this during the cold war. Make up wild demo tapes to scare the other side.
The veil never lifts just shifts.
Thanks for all the fish
Dave
USAF RET
2
Have we compartmentalized everything to the point of not recognizing that Trump and Putin are playing games with all of us? Trump wants a hotel apparently so bad he’s willing to jeopardize the safety of all American’s? Putin wants to turn back the clock and return to the glorious days of unrelenting murder and chaos? Oh wait that’s happening now! We have to wake up and remember who we are! VOTE HIM OUT! Start negotiating a new treaty as soon as possible. Close the loop holes, neither of these men deserve to be in power. Fear does not equal respect.
1
Have the leaders in Russia (like those in Washington) really "learned nothing and forgotten nothing"? The arms race bankrupted the Soviet Union, and this attempt to restart it seems an attempt by Russia to get the US to spend yet more on nuclear weapons.
Don't any of them remember that the whole point of nuclear weapons is NOT to use them? When both the US and Russia start developing yet another generation of world-ending weapons, I can only conclude that this is either base stupidity, certifiable insanity, or "spiritual wickedness in high places."
28
Maybe it is a returned favour bought by campaign contributions from arms manufacturers.
4
@Tom Devine Russia is now a major exporter of oil. It wasn't back then. Putin's budget is completely different. That's why a switch to renewables is the most potent weapon against Russia. It would send them back to soviet collapse years.
6
@Tom Devine
Russia, with a population of approximately 150 million people, leads an economy of approximately $1 trillion in GDP. This is 1/20th US GDP and in range of the GDP of Canada or New York City.
How does a country with such a paltry economic base continue to function as a global geopolitical spoil sport? Nuclear weapons. The only thing truly protecting Russia from global backlash against Putin’s regime is its nuclear deterrent and there’s no way in our lifetime they’ll willingly give it up.
Even if all other factors of geopolitics supported US nuclear disarmament, that fact alone would prevent it. And do both countries committing billions into trillions of dollars modernizing their nuclear arsenals is quite inevitable.
5
Thanks to Russian ineptitude we now have a surplus of radiation in our atmosphere. This is comical. Putin and his lack of greatness must depress him. Using technology that we eschewed 50-60 years ago is interesting. Clearly the Russians could not move the needle.
2
@NOTATE REDMOND Don't underestimate the Russian educational system of their scientific acumen. They are an extremely capable adversary and more than able to compete with the best the US has to offer.
2
@NOTATE REDMOND There's always a possibility of an old technology being enabled by new, e.g. electric car (100+ years old) + Li-ion battery = Tesla
1
Putin and Kim Jong Un, all good buddies with Trump, each testing missiles that can deliver nuclear bombs. We shouldn't worry about a recession, we should worry about annihilation.
2
"For each lie, a debt to the truth is incurred." Chernobyl
Governments' rush to build faster more deadly weapons of mass human destruction is insanity. Last week was the anniversary of America's dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagaski. These events are so horrifying we avoid talking about them because it's so socially repulsive. But we need reminding, frequently, of how there weapons vaporize and destroy human beings on a massive scale.
Trump, Putin, and all those so-called political leaders who insist on building stockpiles of nuclear weapons are by definition predators. They have no regard for the welfare of humanity. Their politics are evil. If they had an ounce of humanism, they would be tireless in working to disarm the world to avoid nuclear annihilation.
Radiation levels in Severodvinsk spiked - such that the release of neutron radiation would possibly explain the immediate contamination and deaths in the containment filed failure zone and also the catastrophic failure of the "rocket engine" during testing. Irradiation-Assisted Stress Corrosion Cracking (IASSCC) due to neutron radiation containment failure makes sense as a possible explanation as does industrial sabotage (Thank you clandestine services and Unit 8200). Neutron radiation can make metals become brittle via neutron-induced swelling and buildup of Wigner energy. High-energy neutrons striking metal gradually damage the metal's crystal lattice. If the motor startup sequence were extended via software sabotage. the engine metals would within seconds begin to fail catastrophically when exposed to a "ductile-to-brittle transition temperature" that was too high. If one assumes that the old Soviet era tech based on neutron bombardment, then one can understand how a failure of engine's containment field could occur. Even a small miscalculation in the start-up sequence could induce a lethal cascade which could not be aborted. I guess the FSB could investigate if they had a clue about what to look for.
2
@American Akita Team Do you think the Ruskis could have been sold some radiation resistant 4 metal alloy that was perhaps not within specs for the intended use? Gee, the USA would never do something so underhanded - that just wouldn't be cricket and gentlemen don't read other people's mail.
2
Radioactive drift seems to be Russia's most prevalent export. Well, besides lies.
3
But, they're our friends!
@BorisRoberts Yes, just like Pakistan is a good ally interested only in world peace and a prosperous and stable Kashmir and Afghanistan.
2
Don’t worry. Vlad will write a nice letter to Trump and all will be forgiven and forgotten.
4
If you subscribe to left-wing paranoid fantasy, Trump's a mole who's trying to undermine our intelligence infrastructure so that Putin hands will be freer to push the nuclear envelope. Personally, I think he's just a pitifully bad manager who's frustrating our intelligence leadership into early retirements. Problem is that the Russians have nothing better to do than beef up their weapon systems. That is since they don't seem to be interested or even capable of encouraging 21st Century economic growth. Creating monsters everywhere he turns, the rot that is Mr. Trump keeps fermenting new ways to hamstring our security infrastructure. Not sure what's worse, an egomaniacal fool in the Oval Office, or a neo-soviet mole.
3
Remind me again why we care if Iran gets a nuclear weapon?
2
Another exploding reactor? Explain to me comrade, how a nuclear reactor explodes, exactly. This same lie was spread about Chernobyl.
Another arms race...and look at who’s running for us...
Remember how Russia denied Chernobyl even melted, even after the radiation leak confirmed it was right there? Oh the lies!They were 'slow and secretive' then too. Putin is sneaky, like the KGB/FSB veteran that he is. Not anyone's good-faith partner.
What American would trust a known adversary like Putie, who boasts of striking America with nuclear missiles, produces a radioactive debacle for the world AGAIN, hides behind that entitled veil of "Who, us??" obfuscates and grins his little cute 'ain't I clever' smile. Who could take his word about anything? Oh wait. Our president, that's who! In fact, the same president who gets flirty, loving kiss covered letters from NK's Kim, accepting personal flattery in exchange for America's leadership. Secret meetings with no Americans allowed (by trump!); tittering about love letters while talking tough out of the other side of his mouth, fierce opposition to releasing his finances, throwing U.S. intelligence agencies under the bus in FAVOR of Putin's powerful word, sneering about how Putin gets to avoid that stupid free press Americans have........
Nope, nothing to be alarmed about, and that mysterious Russian explosion? If Putin says it's nothing, and the CIA/FBI/DHS say it was a failed attempt to attack the U.S., how far would you trust trump to look out for Americ'a interest? Me? Zero.
3
The next president of the US could do nothing more meaningful for the survival of humanity than to go before the United Nations or some other international forum to declare the US will initiate and participate in a full scale initiative to achieve total world nuclear disarmament. In addition to improving the prospects for survival of the species, a major incentive would be the redirection of the trillions-and-trillions wasted on these worse-than-useless weapons to objectives like eliminating world poverty and repairing the terrible damage that has been inflicted on the environment. I sincerely believe such an initiative will eventually be undertaken. Unfortunately, it's highly probable that it will happen only after at least several urban centers have been vaporized in a nuclear attack.
22
@Phillip Usher - I once read about an idea like this in school. It said, "And they will beat their swords into plowshares for a thousand years."
1
We may as well gear up for another arms race with the Russians and, I suppose, the Chinese. Our GDP is over ten times greater than the Russian GDP, so, eventually, Putin or his successor will resign himself to the fact that Russia cannot keep up with the US and we'll negotiate a weapons treaty. Our GDP is over 1/3 larger than China's, tho, in per capita GDP, ours exceeds China's by over three times. So, Xi or his successor will travel the same path as his Russian counterpart in any arms race.
Nuclear weapons of mass destruction are expensive to research, develop, manufacture, and maintain. As this story proves, they are also complicated. If we respond timely to the invitation of Russia and China to a new arms race, we shall, at minimum, always have the means to assure their destruction, even after coordinated first strikes by both of them.
My guess is that our scheming friends in Moscow and Beijing will be ready to negotiate a meaningful arms treaty only after learning the hard lesson that they cannot possibly match the US in money, science, technology, imagination, and lethality.
I'd be a little more comfortable if we had a greater margin over China in general manufacturing acumen, but we have maintained our manufacturing superiority in weapons systems. And I'd be a lot more comfortable if globalist interests were more clearly subordinated to US trade and military policies. But I'd much rather be in the US position than the position of Russian and China.
4
To all fairness, they don't need to match the American military might, they just need to make sure that they have enough weapon to prevent the US to attack them or their interests. 'One time kill all' is good enough for them, and the US can spend all money it wants on 'let's kill everybody thousands times'
2
Or, Russia is trying to bankrupt the US by causing huge military spending.
2
@yulia
My concern is that the Russians may think that nuclear-powered missiles may give them first-strike capabilities. Engaging them in an arms race would simultaneously disabuse them of any such notion and drive them to economic ruin, again--but this time maybe they would find a more suitable leader than Yeltsin or the current crop of oligarchs. Admittedly, this is a dreadful use of wealth that could be better spent so many ways, but, as dangerous as we admit ourselves to be, the Russians and Chinese are much more dangerous due to their relative recklessness.
Launching a hundred or more cruise missiles with nuclear warheads is not much different from sending a hundred or more jet fighters armed with nuclear warheads flying at tree-top level. Such a plan existed for the U.S. in the 1950s, but cooler heads, namely President Eisenhower, scrubbed the mission, fortunately. I trained for this mission and describe it in my novel Fallout: remains of an atomic war.
11
@Muskateer Al...During the Cold War when I deployed,
U. S. Navy aircraft carriers operated globally with launch-ready, nuclear-armed jets and designated pilots on standby at all times. And for all we know, may still do so today.
2
This kind of missile propulsion is an environmental nightmare. Basically, it uses the heat generated from a small quasi unshielded nuclear reactor core as the energy source to heat and expand air to provide propulsion. Just imagine how much radioactivity there is in the exhaust of such a missile. And upon impact, even with a conventional warhead, all the fissile material gets released, making it a kind of dirty bomb. That's why the idea was abandonned during the Cold War.
Most probably, it uses a standard liquid or solid boster to attain a minimum speed at which the nuclear propulsion must take over. I guess this is what went wrong with this test.
16
The nuclear engine does not have to release fissile material during travel. You can look up information on the US effort to build a nuclear powered aircraft in the 50s. It was uneconomical, subjected the pilots to high levels of radiation as as you described, a crash would be a radiation nightmare to clean up.
@SJP
It was the US that devised and deployed the Neutron Bomb. These Days it's known as a "dirty bomb."
When I read of the deployment so many years ago. I thought it was the prime example of of what US General Smedley D. Butler, a retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient exposing WAR IS A RACKET in the 30s!
When the Neutron Bomb explodes, there is not a big destructive blast destroying the War Loot.
What it does is unleash especially enhanced dirty nuclear radiation that cause the living people die a slow tortuous Death.
@John Storvick Wikipedia affirms the opposite, that some contamination would be released during travel. Imagine no shielding and almost direct contact between the airflow and the nuclear core, instead of an indirect heat transfer as in nuclear power plants. Seems plausible to me. And yes, storing and moving these things must be complicated.
1
"Many outside arms experts have long regarded his effort as part fantasy, using a technology the United States tried and failed to make work in the 1950s and 1960s. If so, it may call into question one of the Trump administration’s justifications for major new spending on American nuclear weapons to counter the Russian buildup — though the United States also cites a parallel program underway in China."
You state Trump wants to out-research Russia because he fears a Russian nuclear arms build-up. Judging from the comments I've read on this article, the majority of your readers have the opposite conclusion, Trump wants Russia to have more power.
Why the obvious disconnect?
3
Well F.E.B., Hate Trump is the name of the game. Hate Republicans is the second main motivator. A good portion of the readership of The NYT wants the country to fail so they can say, "I told you so!".
1
@BorisRoberts - And the game of the Trump supporters is to start WWIII hoping to force the hand of Jesus to return so they can say, "I told you so!".
But instead, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth and Republicans saying, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" when no Messiah returns.
1
"[D]eveloping an unlimited-range nuclear-powered cruise missile is folly ... the United States tried this, quickly discovered the limitations and risks, and abandoned it with good reason."
Pity those who would have nuclear-powered whatever whizzing overhead for any reason other than sending spacecraft beyond earth orbit. Sounds like they can't get anything off the ground without having an accident.
4
Is the weapons technology in question a nuclear ramjet? the references to 60's eras failed tech, radioactive contamination, fissile fuel and a rocket of arbitrary range seem to point towards ramjet
That would be my guess. They are wasting their time.
Dear Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin: It's time for a treaty to dismantle all of our nuclear weapons. The winds are changing, and such an agreement will stand out as the legacies of both Presidents, ecclipsing other details in your administrations for centuries to come.
9
@Anonymous Watch out what you ask for. Without the deterrence, those geniuses at the top may start a new world war. We had two back-to-back until nukes made mutual total destruction the main scenario. I think we need disarmament together with pacification. The EU is the model.
1
Trump is so lacking in leadership skills that Putin was able to manipulate him into us withdrawing from the nuclear treaty that could have provided us with information to prevent this. In so many ways, from Iran to South Korea to Russia to Bristol Bay Alaska, this president has made this country more vulnerable and the world a more dangerous place.
16
We are not dealing effectively with Russia because we do not have an actual leader on our side who knows what he is doing. Republicans are on their own side as they have always been.
18
It is disheartening to see that our safety, indeed our very survival, depends on the Russian leadership and defense establishment being more mendacious and inept than our own. It is even more disturbing that the combination of mutually assured destruction and reciprocal ineptitude does not obviate a catastrophic nuclear accident.
5
Project Pluto. In the early 1960s the US worked on development of a nuclear ramjet powered supersonic cruise missile. It was dropped for both technical reasons and that fact that it was provocative and destabilizing. Now Putin is messing around in the same sandbox.
5
Putin can be counted on to continue developing this weapon no matter how many die in the process.
When it's all said and done, this weapon will be unstoppable until and unless we jump in with both feet into this new nuclear arms race.
Thank you, Donald Trump for enabling and emboldening Putin.
Another step closer to nuclear war thanks to Donald J. Trump.
7
I don't doubt that Putin would have progressed with this weapons program had Clinton been elected, but I really doubt that Trump will be able to handle it better. In fact, I expect Trump to get 100% behind any lie Putin concocts as he gets ready to accept more illegal help from Russian election engineers. No, the occupier of our White House will, as usual, do nothing while Putin restores his superpower status at our expense. Let's just hope Putin's bitten off more than he can chew with these kind of weapons. But I doubt that too. I don't think this setback will stop him.
4
The time required to develop these types of technologies requires that the Russians have been working on this for several administrations, not just the current one.
Trumps okay with the errant ways of the Soviets (well modern day Russians) because their weapons are only targeted at immigrants in places like Texas and Sweden.
3
What’s most alarming is that for the most part, the men and women driving this psychotic race toward human extinction have never seen war closeup, bodies blown up, radiation burned babies, or probably even a real bullet wound or dead body, other than on tv or at the movies. What exactly are they imagining? What fantasies are they enacting? I can’t relate at all.
8
@Tom Baroli - I would imagine that Putin, a former KGB officer, has seen dead bodies up close and personal.
How can Russia afford their defense spendings and development program including Syria?
Some numbers for comparison.
The BNP of Russia is about 8 % of US and 10 % of EU. In fact it is larger than the BNP of Spain but smaller than the BNP of Italy.
9
@Jensen Obviously Russia does get more Bangs for it's Bucks.
Maybe with all the criminality the US and the West attribute to Russia, the Russian People are really as Patriotic about Russia as Americans are about the USA? Except they know they can't afford a loss of some $21 TRILLION unaccounted for like the Pentagon.
Americans don't seem to care and continuing paying without question.
Russia entering the Syrian World War only in 2015, just when ISIS was about to achieve the US Goal brought out within weeks of 9/11 to change the Assad regime, put the brakes on those 2001 US WAR PLANS.
Trump has served NOTICE to the World, despite the US setback in Syria, he is following that same 2001 US WAR PLAN leading to the END, by going after Iran.
4
@Jensen very simple - the BNP/ GNP/ GDP etc in many western nations are exaggerated by the higher [standard of living] wages etc. Example: an IT person paid about USD 65k per year in Ukraine does the same or more output than one paid $200k in US,
2
@Jensen
National priorities.
It’s not as if Russia spends money on roads, for example.
5
Existing antiballistic systems could be useless against such a weapon, but it's certainly possible to design interceptors capable of taking it down. Whether or not Russia ultimately succeeds in this effort, it would be prudent to develop countermeasures, and quickly.
5
@M.
Never forget that Democrats and so-called ‘progressives’ have fought missile defense tooth and nail for decades.
@EGD okay, I'll remember that Democrats and "so-called progressives" fought against missile defense for decades, based upon the not-entirely-unfounded MAD doctrine, not that it has any bearing on the present question.
That is, if you'll remember Republicans and so-called conservatives started a war in Iraq under false pretenses, cheat relentlessly on elections and judicial appointments, lie with abandon about everything from climate change to economics, elevated a slimy reality-show hack to be president with the help of Russian psy-ops, and scapegoat and slander defenseless minorities daily.
Deal?
2
Is this an air breather using the reactor to heat expand and accelerate air molecules for propulsion or does it carry some other reaction mass? Does anyone know of a source that actually describes the propulsion system?
4
@Frank Knarf
>Is this an air breather using the reactor to heat expand and accelerate air molecules for propulsion or does it carry some other reaction mass?
For "this" equal to the Tomahawk-sized nuclear powered cruise missile Putin has been talking about for a while, it very likely uses a reactor-heated turbojet engine that works off air during the long cruise phase. It would probably need a booster on takeoff and might have a limited supply of fuel to power a brief high-speed terminal run-in.
Whether that has anything at all to do with the Nenoksa incident is TBD.
@Frank Knarf
I believe it's thought to be similar to the US Project Pluto. Here's the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
I'm far from an expert, but it looks like this Wikipedia article understates the problems with Project Pluto. Look up the Arms Control Wonk podcast (hosted by Jeffrey Lewis, mentioned in the article, and I think they had Ankit Panda, also mentioned in this article, with them as well) episode on it, which describes the problems in more detail.
1
As matter of fact, by mid 2005(time when the UN report about Chernobyl was released), only 50 deaths were attributed to the accident (according to the report). The report noted the spike in the incidents of thyroid cancer in the affected area, but the survival of such cancer was more than 90%. Moreover, the report noted that effect of perestroika was much more harmful than accident to the heals of the people in the former Soviet republics. General worsening of population health made impossible to determine exact toll of the accident, because mortality in the areas affected by the accident increased in the same degree as mortality in the areas unaffected by the accident. Conclusion: perestroika was much more deadly than the accident.
6
@yulia: It wasn't perestroika all by itself that led to the chaotic collapse of society and the rise of the oligarchs, with as you say, a shortening of life expectancy as a quantifiable symptom. It's a terrible story that needs a lot of attention.
But of course, in reference to Chernobyl, you are making an apples and oranges comparison. Alcoholism and drugs cause far more deaths, but that doesn't suggest that badly designed and managed nuclear power plants aren't a problem.
9
The increased mortality did coincide with perestroika, hunting on causation. And I am not saying that nuclear plants are not a danger, but we need to know how big the danger is. And it is clear that social upheaval is much more dangerous than even such huge accident as Chernobyl.
@yulia
That is one very conservative estimate.
Dig a little deeper and the lowest estimated death toll from Chernobyl is 4,000. That's rather distinct difference. And that's the lowest total. It ranges from there to upwards of 60,000.
Reference: https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima
While the two incidents, Chernobyl and Fukushima, are often cited as the worst nuclear incidents in history, the testing of thermonuclear weapons released far more radiation. The remote areas chosen for that testing, as well the caution that is connected to these one-at-a-time reactor incidents, should tell the public the minimum of what it needs to know about what is in store for all of us if nuclear war comes about.
When you attack an enemy with nuclear weapons, you attack your own population. There is no getting around that.
And the deeper buried the weapons under attack are, the more fallout will be kicked up. All those Air Force missiles buried in silos out West? Whether or not the Russians could ever take it out, their attempting to do so will bring widespread death to those of us living east of the Mississippi even if they fail to directly drop a nuke anywhere on its east bank.
Does that make you feel more secure?
Such weapons, the relatively few we need for what deterrence can be gained from that, should be on a submarines hidden beneath the waves.
2
Remember when Trump was asked "When was American the Greatest?""
He replied "1958"
Well I think Putin is also frozen in the 20th Century, using missile,naval ships and tanks to define Russian greatness.
It would be nice to have some forward thinking leaders for a change.
45
Well, the occupation of Iraq did occur in 21 century. Seems like nothing much changed since 20 century.
1
Remember the "Space Based Laser" that caused so much uproar in the late 80s that they shut it down? I worked on it after that. We mounted it in an airplane.
@yulia
As did the destruction of Syria using Russian weaponry, money, troops and support.
But who's counting?
Almost seems as if the Russians are dusting off every Cold War weapon design that they can find, in order to stay in the Global Superpower game.
The American version of this was Project Pluto. From Wikipedia "The weapon was considered "too provocative",[2] and it was believed that it would compel the Soviets to construct a similar device, against which there was no known defense." So. Here we are.
The weapon would necessarily fly unshielded, and irradiate everything beneath it. Being a cruise missile, it would circumvent all known radar tracking sites, and fly for months, or until the neutron flux destroys a critical component.
9
@Cluebat . "Irradiate everything beneath it." Science please. The nuclear component of this design is a power source supplying heat to eject ionized gas. It's just a small nuclear device, one that can't become a bomb. It will radiate Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. The Alpha (largest particle) can travel a centimeter or two in air. The Beta a few yards. The Gamma, a couple hundred yards. A Cruise missile flying at 1,000 mph would not irradiate much of anything.
9
@Ernest Montague the exhaust contained radioactive particles that dusted the areas it flew over.
2
@Jake Logan It did? Science please.... There are no " radioactive particles" in the exhaust of a nuclear rocket that I know of. It's just superheated hydrogen or some other gas, heated until it ionizes and spews out the nozzle. It is never in contact with the radioactive core.
Maybe Putin will send Trump a small apology for testing this new weapon.
19
Maybe a very beautiful letter!
4
I’m sure it will be a beautiful letter that trump will keep close to his heart. Barf
I wonder if Putin sent Trump 'a really beautiful letter' the kind that Kim sent him before he tested his missile. I wonder what Trump will say to this latest betrayal from one of his favorite despots.
His response to Kim was classic Trump. Kim apologized, and it was only a small missile, and also what about those expensive military exercises? We really need to do something about those.
Maybe Putin had nothing to with this. Maybe someone bombed that place in Russia. Maybe the Clintons did it. And anyway, even if they did do it, it didn't work, so what's the big deal?
We live in strangelove times. The president of the United States is working on behalf of its enemies, leaving his party and his security agencies scrambling, pretending to support him while undermining him.
On such a fragile thread we all hang.
73
The obsession people have with the Trump/Putin/Kim connection has no basis in facts, your imagination is running away with you. Putin's people messed with the elections, but there isn't enough money involved to make Trump hook up with Putin. We all know he is all about the money.
1
They need the expertise and intelligence of our secretary of energy, Rick Perry. He can lead a prayer rally for rain.
60
@Harry B
Distractions-R-Rus
Russia's nuclear-powered cruise missile, a throwback to crazy-sounding Cold War weapons tech, is back. Russia hadn't tested the weapon in nearly a year—until last week, that is. The missile is known to the U.S. as the SSC-X-9 “Skyfall.”
"Hey, look over here at my shiny object!"
If you want to know what Russia has really developed, look at what they don't want to talk about, so much.
There have been cryptic clues over the years that Perimeter still exists. Which illustrates one of the curiosities of this system, which is that the Soviet Union kept its existence secret from the American enemy whom it was supposed to deter. If Russia is now discussing Perimeter publicly, that’s reason for the rest of us to worry.
Viktor Yesin, who commanded Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces in the 1990s, spoke of Perimeter/Dead Hand:
Yesin: "The Perimeter system is functioning, it has even been improved. But when it works, we will have little left - we can only launch those missiles that will survive after the first attack of the aggressor."
Putin needs Trump, in order to stand down after a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Looks like everything is working as planned, and operational status is still, 'Go!'
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-dead-hand-nuclear-doomsday-weapon-back-38492
Dr. Strangelove - Doomsday Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozg7gEchjuM
Vladimir Putin has bragged that the new Russian nuclear-powered ‘cruise’ missile can reach anywhere on earth. If questioned about whether Mr. Putin and the Russians would target the United States, Donald Trump undoubtedly will say, “I don’t know any reason why they would.”
16
@sdw AND add to that: “Putin told me he wouldn't. I dont trust my intelligence community because they hate me. Putin and Kim write beautiful letters to me.”
3
@Tanza
You're right. We cannot forget the letters.
Putin is on a path, to war. He is looking to destroy life in Russia and the US. He is on a complete suicide mission. nothing good Becomes of nuclear testing for building new Advanced nuclear missiles it starts and unnecessary race to Balance power. all this money and Technology could be used to build spaceships and explore other worlds for resources or mines for resources and work together as a community. nobody ever wins wars. the biggest shame here is that Russian citizens can't even protest and their own country without being thrown in prison for speaking freedom of words. hopefully Russia will do something within its country and stabilize itself
9
@George
We're in a war already, but only Russia knows it. Read the headlines, they're everywhere, in every country, propping up leaders and sowing division. It's a new kind of war... but it absolutely is war.
4
Yeah, so why is the US spending so much money on its military? Is it merely for exploration of the other Worlds? Or it plans to dominate not only the Earth but the Universe?
@yulia
Why is Russia continuing to occupy Georgia and the Crimea? Why is your country still pretending that there is an "arms race"?
There is no arms race - at least, not one you would be able to "win." And your economy is less than that of Texas. And here you are spending much needed money on internet trolls and calamitous, poorly conceived nuclear weapons.
How primitive we humans work so hard to create a great nation that prospers with a vibrant economy at peace, while creating weapons that would destroy us all. It seems people don't think about life very hard.
22
@PATRICK
Especially the Russians-but US citizens, the further away they are from either ocean, seem to have s bizarre idea that the rest of the planet does not really exist and that as long as they can't see it, it cannot possibly matter.
This is the sort of thinking that helped to lead so many dolts to think the Civil War could be weasily won simply by ignoring the East and the Western halves of the country.
As for Putin, he is providing the Russo-Soviet equivalent of bread and circuses to his people-in the manner of what he claims are new invulnerble,unstoppable "new" nuclear weapons-made to win the big atomic war of 1955.
1
@PATRICK It's all about greed and wanting to control world events. There's a reason that greed is one of the most deadly sins.
You would think people would know by now, 2000 years after the birth of Christ.
Leave it to the Russians to revive an idea that was so bad the U.S. discarded it as unworkable and dangerous decades ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto There are two problems with a nuclear-powered hypersonic cruise missile. Problem no.1: the power plant is prone to accidents and leaves a trail of radiation. Problem no. 2: such missiles are the opposite of stealthy. This is a weapons concept best left to science fiction.
17
@James,
There has been 50 years of scientific and engineering progress since Project Pluto was shut down. The Wiki article you link to says that the project was technologically successful, but ballistic missiles were cheaper/quicker. But now there are defenses against ballistic missiles, so maybe that 50 years of progress is being put to work.
3
@Charles Becker
There has been 50 years of scientific and engineering research in the west. In Russia? Not so much.
Air-cooled reactors have not been a good idea since Windscale.
5
@James Ha, you think Putin cares about radiation? That's rich!
BTW, we invented the SLAM, not the Russians. So, yeah...we got that going for us.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a13978519/slam-cruise-missile-nuclear-thermonuclear/
1
Thousands did not die due to the Chernobyl explosion event itself, but thousands did (and still are) due to the fallout through radiation-related health effects. It is continually staggering to me that a reactor sat open to the atmosphere for at least five months yet deaths due to radiation effects like cancer over the last 30 years is still 'speculative' and 'doubtful'. The death toll is heavily debated and an exact number will never be known. A lot of information has been covered up or is not reported. But anyone who has done some decent research of the disaster will only naturally conclude the death toll was not possibly just in the tens to low hundreds as some claim. Those shortsighted reports are ignorant, and disrespectful to those who have sacrificed and suffered. I recommend people read Midnight in Chernobyl by A. Higginbotham. Or Chernobyl Prayer by Alexievich, which talks to people who lived through it. "...after the accident there has been a sharp rise of cancer, child mental retardation, neuropsychistric disorders, and genetic disorders. Chernobyl released 50 million curies of radioactivity of which 70% fell upon Belarus. In the ten years following the accident the mortality rate rose 23.5%, and typical lifespan fell to about 50. The number of liquidators exceeded 800,000 with average age 33 or younger. 115,000 were from Belarus as reported by their Ministry of Health, and between 1990-2003 8500 of them died." -Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize
20
@Max Agree. Some of the initial scientific projections for the number of people affected mentioned that the true scope of the damage to people's health would not become apparent for at least 30 to 35 years, as that would be the amount of time it would take for some cancers and genetic mutations caused by the accident to start manifesting in the population. Some obviously showed up much earlier, but the true impact is still to be known
6
@Max Why do you think so many Americans have died from cancer in the Midwest? Yeah, the American military is reponsible for that.
"When the US entered the nuclear age, it did so recklessly. New research suggests that the hidden cost of developing nuclear weapons were far larger than previous estimates, with radioactive fallout responsible for 340,000 to 690,000 American deaths from 1951 to 1973."
https://qz.com/1163140/us-nuclear-tests-killed-american-civilians-on-a-scale-comparable-to-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/
2
Don't worry folks. Just simply build a fallout shelter in your basement or under the concrete slab of your home and stock with food nobody would want to eat and hide out for a few hundred years so your great, great, great grandkids can finally emerge to become the heroes of yet another "Out of the Ashes" novel to repopulate the earth with fanatical zombies.
11
The taxpayers spend billions, even trillions of dollars over the years, on our grossly inefficient and inept ( not so,) Intelligence Services resulting in basic intelligence failures such as “911” , 1979 Iran Ayatollah surprise, the Hungarian Uprising, the Korean War, Pearl Harbor to name buy a few...Now this Star Wars like warp II supersonic Russian missile threat that, reportedly, can flash thru all known defenses hitting their targets in a twinkling! We are doomed to be Russia’s slave if this is in fact the case.
1
@Moe Haven't you noticed who's (really) running this country?
At least, 40% of America is already Russia's slave.
@Moe
Don't worry, Moe. It's not the case.
President Trump: I have spoken to Vladimir Putin and he was very strong in his denial that there was a significant radiation leak in the explosion that occurred near the Nenoksa Missile Test Site. I can tell you that we have many more dangerous leaks in this country coming from people in my administration.
29
@Jay Orchard Fortunately for Trump, he doesn't need to talk to his master anymore. He's already been briefed.
"That makes them virtually unstoppable for the existing American antimissile systems in Alaska and California, which are designed to intercept intercontinental ballistic missile warheads in space, traveling a largely predictable path."
I wonder how many people believe we have an effective missile defense system. We can only hope that we never learn it doesn't exist.
3
Mutually Assured Destruction will still occur, no matter how weirdly "innovative" russian missile design gets. HOWEVER, thinking they have the rational perspective to NOT pollute the planet even more with NEEDLESS nuclear disasters/"experiments", creating a danger for all humans on the planet, is obviously naive. They have no such perspective. THIS is why test ban treaties were created: to halt the madness. What could possibly be the goal of more nukes?
Their use, EVER, would cause the end of humanity. There is NO "first strike""logic" that would allow any of this to be created. None. This is insanity.
We do NOT have anyone in our government with the clarity of mind to take the correct steps to pressure russia to stop this.
10
@Slann
Russia has always had a doomsday weapon with the Myortvaya Ruka automated nuclear weapon launch system. What's insane is that Putin want to develop even more psycopathic weapon systems. That's not a good sign.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-dead-hand-nuclear-doomsday-weapon-back-38492
What is the big deal? If nuclear war does not end life as we know it, pollution and overpopulation will.
12
@Morris G <-- No.
Global warming/Pollution will certainly kill the planet. Overpopulation, not so much, that's fake news. We have enough food on this planet to feed twice the current population with ease. The problem is political will but GW might change that fact if we don't do anything decisive about it.
@Morris G
Yeah, but isn't one on purpose, and the other is on accident?
...oh, wait
Sounds very much like our NERVA experiments, which were intended for Space Travel and ended in 1973. A collaboration with our comrades would do a great benefit to the human race, in the form of a Man on Mars. Our current trajectory will result in a warhead on the other side of the world.
3
@wfw It was called SLAM, and it was in development for quite awhile in Nevada.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a13978519/slam-cruise-missile-nuclear-thermonuclear/
"Nuclear arms races are partly about the weapons, but they are also about leaving the impression that systems work, even if they don’t."
The idea that there is a Doomsday Weapon hovering in the background is storied. The mistake in thinking about it is that it exists as a separate, discrete weapons system or that it is exclusively Russian. Nope, the US has equal access to such a system.
The Doomsday Weapon is the the decidedly certain effects of relying on massive nuclear arsenals to achieve an unsteady "peace." Virtually any contemplated use of nuclear weapons against a nuclear-armed foe would quickly exceed the atmosphere's ability to disperse and dilute the enormous fallout produced by nuclear war.
If the Chernobyl and Fukushima meltdowns were scary, then consider that a nuclear weapon's explosion is much the same thing as an exploding reactor. Then repeat that over and over in as quick a fashion as possible. The horrors of these accidents would be dwarfed by the resulting war fallout.
GABRIEL was a 1949 study produced by the AEC scientists after the were asked how big an attack on the USSR was possible while avoiding harm to the US. When we bomb someone else, the fallout isn't contained, it spreads globally. An attack on another is equivalent to a choice to commit planetary suicide. Holding a gun to your head is hardly the stuff needed for convincing deterrence. The total yield needed is only ~60 megatons before global fallout ensues.
Doomsday Machine = nuke war.
14
@Mike
There's already a Doomsday Weapon, and it's live:
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-dead-hand-nuclear-doomsday-weapon-back-38492
I know that NYT editors will never publish this, but I just want them to know that, at least, one civilian American knows what's up. Putin can't take the chance on the 2020 election, so it's basically go time, right now. I hope that the editors at the NYT will start informing the public ASAP about the threats we are facing.
These mass murders are not coincident, Trump is Putin's Puppet, and he will stand down once Putin begins a full-fledged attack. I'm totally over my life, and ready to die at anytime.
But, most people are not. I suggest you start preparing people for imminent death or a protracted war that WILL go nuclear.
BTW, despite our technology Giant Meteor could wipe us out at anytime, so it's no reason to be afraid, but it's a reason to be prepared for death.
Thank you.
@dad
You may be impressed by the spin put on that, but still it's basically what I said it was.
It's the notion that engaging in nuclear war gains one anything much that people seem to have a hard time comprehending. Yes, the most powerful weapons ever created, but they are still useless for all practical purposes.
War between nuclear armed opponents leads to planetary suicide. The fallout created will destroy the attacker just as surely as the bombs themselves destroy those attacked with them.
Putin doesn't need Perimeter to engage as a Doomsday weapon. He could simply not retaliate at all and the fallout from a significant US strike would return back to the US.
The enormous power of thermonuclear bombs pushes much of the fallout into the stratosphere. It was hypothesized that fallout would stay aloft long enough to substantially cool off. Sorry, disproven, it comes back down too fast, even short-lived I-131.
It also doesn't come down evenly. The circulation pattern in the stratosphere pulls from the equator and the poles. Not much likely to hit the Southern Hemisphere, but the Northern will be suffuse with fallout floating around. The pull from N and S concentrates fallout deposition over 45 degree N and about 5 degrees on either side of the line. Pretty much right through Chicago, the East Coast, Europe, Russia. There it comes down about 8 times as intensely is it were evenly deposited across the globe. Try explaining that to the voters. No prez ever has, nor Putin.
3
I can’t help but wonder whether Trump did in fact Putin’s bidding by withdrawing from the arms treaty with Russia so that the latter can engage in exactly this type of weapon development; from their mutual point of view it’s a win-win: provides an apparent cover for Trump against accusations of Russian meddling (US denounces Russia!) while allowing Russia to proceed unimpeded.
38
@ml Given our traitor's total ignorance of science, technology, history and diplomacy, you're probably correct. He's been played by pooty before, and this seems to be another instance. WE (humanity) lose.
8
@ml You're still wondering?
1
Russia doesn't need missiles to attack the USA. He's be better off just putting another squad of computer nerds on line to promote nonsense about our shortcomings. He did a fine job putting Trump in as President, and seems intent to get him re-elected. Anyone who thinks Putin's viral lie campaign didn't contribute significantly to Trump's victory is delusional. He's winning the conflict in the cheapest and cleverest of ways.
80
@Lawrence Siegel I would agree that the Russians have discovered the greatest weakness of genuinely open societies. And that is unlike Russia, we can't and therefore don't suppress crazy conspiracy theories, even if they spawn terrorist attacks like the one in El Paso. What's weird tho is that they appear to have no idea how to help themselves join the 21st Century economy, by freeing up capital and enabling their citizens to govern themselves and their businesses competitively. With their millions of talented people and all their natural resources, Russia is a sleeping giant of economic growth. Their only model is that of a mafia-style oligarchy; all anyone has to do to realize it'll never yield a genuinely competitive society is to look at the backwardness of Sicily.
2
@Lawrence Siegel
Viktor Yesin, who commanded Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces in the 1990s, spoke of Perimeter/Dead Hand during an interview last month in the Russian newspaper Zvezda [Google English translation here]. Yesin said that if the United States starts deploying intermediate-range missiles in Europe, Russia will consider adopting a doctrine of a preemptive nuclear strike. But he also added this:
Zvezda: "Will we have time to answer if the flight time is reduced to two to three minutes when deploying medium-range missiles near our borders? In this version, all hope is only on Perimeter. And for a retaliatory strike. Or was Perimeter also disassembled for parts?
Yesin: "The Perimeter system is functioning, it has even been improved. But when it works, we will have little left - we can only launch those missiles that will survive after the first attack of the aggressor."
@Lawrence Siegel
Distractions-R-Rus
Russia's nuclear-powered cruise missile, a throwback to crazy-sounding Cold War weapons tech, is back. The Burevestnik (“Storm Petrel”) is designed to evade U.S. defenses. Russia hadn't tested the weapon in nearly a year—until last week, that is. The missile is known to the U.S. as the SSC-X-9 “Skyfall.”
"Hey, look over here at my shiny object!"
If you want to know what Russia has really developed, look at what they don't want to talk about, so much.
There have been cryptic clues over the years that Perimeter still exists. Which illustrates one of the curiosities of this system, which is that the Soviet Union kept its existence secret from the American enemy whom it was supposed to deter. If Russia is now discussing Perimeter publicly, that’s reason for the rest of us to worry.
Viktor Yesin, who commanded Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces in the 1990s, spoke of Perimeter/Dead Hand:
Yesin: "The Perimeter system is functioning, it has even been improved. But when it works, we will have little left - we can only launch those missiles that will survive after the first attack of the aggressor."
Putin needs Trump, in order to stand down after a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Looks like everything is working as planned, and operational status is still, 'Go!'
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-dead-hand-nuclear-doomsday-weapon-back-38492
Dr. Strangelove - Doomsday Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozg7gEchjuM
To me looks like; Putin asked Trump to pull out from Nuclear treaty so, that he could test this.
Trump is working for Putin and not for USA or the good world.
41
One more instance where we have a president whose foreign policy at best is a fiasco and at worst designed for chaos. As with his domestic “policies “, comments, tweets, actions and lack of action , he has made this World even more unstable. He remains a clear and present danger.
29
Public acknowledgement of Mutually Assured Destruction has been hidden behind the theatrics of treaties and public diplomacy for a few decades. But MAD behavior has never really been eliminated from our world. And with the latest rise of autocrats and wannabe autocrats, like Putin, Kim, Trump et al we are being reminded of the ticking time bomb and the approach of the doomsday hour.
9
If this weren't being reported in the NYT I'd suspect it of being some sort of bad sci-fi fantasy. US intel officials have their work cut out for them. On the other hand, however, why should they bother? Our esteemed leader will take the word of Vladimir Putin over theirs about the nature of what's going on here anyway. Discouraging, and frightening.
20
The explosion was undoubtedly caused by an explosion of hydrogen, the gas used by nuclear propulsion systems to provide thrust, and the fuel of choice for misguided proponents of fuel cell vehicles. The U.S. is involved in similar efforts to develop nuclear propulsion systems for space - likely, for space-based weapons systems.
Like after the Fukushima accident, the panic of local residernts was unwarranted. The brief radiation spike reached 2 µSv/hr (microsieverts/hour); passengers flying on a commercial jet are exposed to more than 3 µSv/hr for hours at a time. Though iodine pills aren't typically available on a commercial jet, passengers should take comfort in the fact stale pretzels will be just as effective at protecting them from exposure to gamma radiation at altitude.
For irrational fear, on the other hand, there is no effective medication.
12
Iodine is taken because the body only absorbs as much as it is able. Thus the pills are prophylactic toward absorption of radioactive iodine, which is otherwise readily absorbed by the thyroid and quickly causes cancer.
Do not confuse gamma radiation with radioactive isotopes. Pills cannot help with gamma radiation. Radioactive materials are much deadlier if a person consumes them, through breathing dust or eating plants or fish. Once inside the body, even a very small amount of certain materials can be very dangerous. Meter tools do not consider ingestion or inhalation. They only measure the presence of alpha and beta particles, and/or penetrating, electromagnetic X rays and gamma rays.
Also, please do not make claims without references. I suspect Fukashima Daichi environmental contamination readings were much more severe than you indicate. Readings depend on where you bring a meter and what type of particles the meter is capable of detecting. And a lot of the concern early on was dangerous dust able to blow around in the wind.
The nation of Japan is thoroughly aware of the danger of radioactive isotopes in the body. (If you want to have a good cry, google The Black Rain sometime. Warning: it is horrifically sad.) Evacuating the nearby people to protect them was definitely the right call. Everyone is precious.
11
@BobMeinetz Correct. The headline conflating this incident with Chernobyl is ludicrous and must have been written by a non science writer. There are orders of magnitude of difference between the two. Any nuclear power source in a rocket or cruise missile is going to be quite small.
This information should be open to inform those who might be exposed or wish to take precautions...But in Russia it is done differently.
Indeed, Russia is currently run by Neo-Soviets who only know how to run the show the way the Soviet Union was run. That ammo dump that exploded last week also appears to have something nuclear exploding in the video.
15
Gee, Russia's lying again? Who's surprised?
Putin and Trump lying together - no wonder they get along so well.
20
Sounds like we need to get new leadership for China, Russia and the U.S. before they kill us all. Of course, we are the worst offender so maybe we should start first and set the example.
20
@Jeffrey Tierney.
Ironic that all military leaders are worried about missle defence.If it were possible to stop eightof ten missles the end result of several hundred nuclear explosions would erase all mankind from this world.Amazing we have people in control who advocate first strike success.Right out of Dr.Strange Love.
10
@Jeffrey Tierney We're not the worst, our guy is leaving soon; Xi and Putin, they're not going anywhere.
5
Perhaps Mr. Putin will write Mr. Trump a “beautiful letter” about the incident. In it, Mr. Putin will tell Mr. Trump how much he admires him, so there’s nothing to worry about.
30
What a sad world we live in.
10
Well I, for one, trust our president to see us through this quickly and safely.
Now excuse me while I collapse in tears.
13
Even when Russia has a nuclear explosion, Trump's critics can only fixate on Trump. Is everything now Trump's fault? Do they realize that when every single thing is his fault, nothing is.
4
@AACNY
Yes. Elections have consequences.
10
@AACNYI don’t think people are blaming Trump, but many have little confidence that he will seriously study the issue, take the time to understand the technology, consult with experienced intelligence experts and diplomats, and listen to people who know more than him to come up with a strategy. It’s not what he does, as he mires himself in conspiracy theories, quackery and political expediency. If you have been paying attention, you would know that he has caused a major brain drain and experience deficit in our most important agencies such as Defense, Intelligence, Security, and others. We are as vulnerable now as we have ever been at any time in our history...and he either doesn’t understand that or doesn’t recognize the long term danger.
8
@AACNY
The issue with Trump is that he chooses to believe Putin over our own career intelligence agency experts. We DO need to deal with Putin and Russia. The concern is that Trump is utterly incapable of effectively doing so.
3
A nuclear powered airplane sounds pretty cool. Nuclear power is arguably very necessary to offset greenhouse gas emissions. And airplanes are sizable emitters.
Terrible that it's being developed as a nuclear tipped cruise missile.
The Russians presumably could already achieve the same result by launching nuclear cruise missiles from subs parked off the East Coat. But maybe this is cheaper than deploying missile boats.
@Mmm Airplanes crash, especially in development. Spreading a cloud of nuclear debris in the atmosphere is UNNECESSARY. So is a "nuclear powered airplane", no matter how "cool" that may sound.
NO!!
5
Putin wants his Russia to be feared again just like the good old USSR days. So he develops awesome weapons of mass destruction, or claims to. This distracts his people, although not all based on the recent protests, from their low standard of living and the corruption of leadership. While Trump is president, Putin has a window to develop these weapons that may close in 2021.
7
It would be nice if I could take this article at face value as opposed to wondering whether Trump et al are lying and to what end.
6
Trump will spin this so as not to cast negativity on his buddy, Putin. Republicans, rabidly anti-communist,need to stand up to Trump and stop pandering to those who are not our friends. Having said that, diplomacy is the only way out of these situations, so the U.S. needs to strengthen, not weaken, its alliances around the world.
7
@Anne Unfortunately, I don't think there are any members of Trump's government that have any clue about diplomacy.
6
Maybe Trump could help by committing the US to advancing this technology and keeping Putin abreast of progress?
4
>> the scale of the accident appeared vastly smaller than the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in 1986, which killed thousands
The death toll from the Chernobyl explosion was two people killed in the explosion itself, followed by around 30 deaths from acute radiation exposure, not “thousands.”
7
@David
Thanks for pointing out their mistake. I made a similar comment on here, but getting posted seems hit or miss on NYTimes.
2
@David
The number of projected Chernobyl related deaths has reached 4,000, with 90 already deceased. 30 at the time of the explosion and 60 since.
Don't worry, Dems. The real problems are at home. Don't worry about Russia, China, Iran, et al. If we can elect Elizabeth or Bernie we can turn attention to appeasing those guys while we crush the economic system that has laid the golden egg.
1
So, this is how Donald Trump's Russian friend is going to help him Make America Great Again. We will go back to the 1950s when we lived under the threat of a Russian nuclear attack and as school children we learned how to get under our desks and impotently hide form a nuclear tipped missile attack. Is this the America Trump wants to return us to?
12
Russia can never win a war with its third-world overhyped petro-state status. They learned that in the cold war. Putin wants to project power. They're botching the tests.
6
That was precise idea of Hitler in 1941. In 1945 the Soviets were in Berlin.
Makes me wonder why we worry about climate change. We will destroy the earth before climate change gets us. Burn those fossil fuels while you got-um, because human beings are responsible enough to have nuclear weapons
4
The explosion at Chernobyl did not kill thousands. The initial explosion and radioactive release killed a few dozen plant workers and firefighters. It is suspected that thousands of workers who helped clean up the site or who were in proximity to the site during the event suffered increased cancer rates as a result, though this is largely speculation. Either way, the death count is highly contested and it is misleading to suggest that thousands died in a nuclear explosion.
5
Expect that trump will not only openly deny these reports but dismiss the reporting as "fake news". He will also disparage the "US Officials" involved in some underhanded way. This is par for the course now with this administration.
8
I am sure Trump will shortly, by tweet, re-assure us "it was just a small radiation spill" and that we should all "Rest safe and sound" because he's on it. We'll just have to wait until he's out of office to find out the truth.
6
This article gives the incorrect impression that that this new weapon suddenly puts us all at risk. Time for hysteria and a new arms race.
However the fact is that those anti-missile systems in California and Alaska would be ineffective against any real attack today, as would their Russian counterparts. We’re already living in a balance of terror, and this new cruise missile doesn’t change that.
So let’s not get hysterical and worry about real defense. We’re better off negotiating arms reduction treaties for this kind of weapon that no one needs. And worrying more about Russian and North Korean hackers.
10
Time to switch from the mineshaft gap to the nuclear rocket fuel gap.
Thank you, Stanley Kubrick, for helping us frame this issue over a half-century later.
5
May Russia go gently into the night. I love the Russian people & they should be proud of the accomplishments of the Rodina. However, this is not one of those proud moments. Russia is in decline and Putin and other high-level people understand this. The only thing Russia has to sell to the world is oil, gas and military weapons. Climate change will continue to have a major negative impact on the Russian economy as the developed world moves away from carbon based energy (i.e., when oil moves below $55/BBL the Russian Gov't has to drawn down financial reserves to keep the country working). Regarding military weapons: The Russians are making agreements with the Chinese. What makes you think that the Chinese are not stealing Russian military technology as we speak. Also, European Russians do not trust or like the Chinese and neither do the Chinese like or trust the Russians. China once control a large part of Far Eastern Russia and Russians are concerned that China will do it again (i.e., I was told this over lunch with a high level Russian official). Putin is a proud man and is angry at the loss of the Soviet empire. Western Europe lost its colonial empire in the 1950 and 60s. It is just taking a little longer for Russia to come to grips with this issue. Russia's choice is to join in with Europe or fade back to the time, before Ivan the Terrible, when Tartars controlled Russia.
7
@Rod A return to the Sino-Soviet border tensions of the 1960s & 70s would have a very different dynamic. Considering the huge leaps and bounds by China in it's industry, technology, and economy, Russia would be the far weaker actor.
2
@Rod
A little longer? Russia has ALWAYS lagged behind the world leaders in everything. They didn't FREE their serfs (landed slaves) until 1861, when the rest of Europe did away with Feudalism centuries earlier.
Now they're trying to "perfect" technology that the USA tried to develop in the 1950-60s and failed, and moved on? The article quoted someone who suspects "they're having a problem "lighting" the nuclear reactor part of the rocket's fuel source. That's on heck of a powerful fuel source to not only "light" but to contain. And it's obvious that the Russian military scientists can't contain it.
2
Didn't America free its slaves in 1861? Seems like it was well behind of Europe as well.
2
My guess is our intelligence resources are already deployed so we know a lot about this. But we also know that real estate developer trump tends to downplay negative findings about Russia so whatever happened may be far worse than will ever be admitted while he is in office.
10
Look at the Russian perspective. We develop anti missile systems and toss the ABM treaty, put those systems in Europe and claim it's because of a threat from Iran. If those systems work, then we have a first strike advantage. Russia lost over twenty million people in WWII, and has a long memory, if not some deserved paranoia. Mutually Assured Destruction is a horrible, but sane strategy when it comes to nuclear weapons. But it only works when both, or all sides are on an even playing field. If Russia is developing weapons systems intended to evade our ABM systems, maybe we need to sit down with them and come up with a negotiated solution, rather than responding with typical bellicosity. It may not help our defense contractors stock prices, but it would make the world safer.
11
@RichardL
Unfortunately for them, their long memory and reluctance to change in any way other than slower than molasses in January, it just holds them back. I'm sick of looking at "their" way. Those deaths are all on Stalin's hands, for purging his military ranks BEFORE that way, by signing a "pact" with the foe that eventually invaded them, and for simply having an advantage in numbers so much so that they could, and did, just keep throwing people into the front line. It's now EIGHTY years later and where's Russia? Still underdeveloped, still poor, still corrupt and stagnant to the bone.
2
The whole Europe signed pacts with the foe, sometimes sacrificing the other countries to avoid the conflict. The USSR was actually quite late in the game, much behind of such Democratic countries as France and Britain. And in term of people, there were plenty of people in Europe, even more in their colonies and yet they all fell to Hitler. They preferred to be occupied by Nazis rather than fight for their freedom. Yes, it required the sacrifice, and Russians were willing to do so for sake of the independence of their country. No wonder they don't want again face such choice: occupation or freedom paid by millions lives.
1
The comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty need to be amended to include the testing of nuclear powered rocket or aircraft engines in the atmosphere. This is a loophole that could have catastrophic consequences.
6
How can you amend it without Russian agreement? And how are you going to get the Russians to agree?
5
@chris Hynes
A good question, but they did agree to the first one. Perhaps they will realize it is in their long term interest, given Russia is also vulnerable to radioactive contamination by themselves or others that could render parts of their country uninhabitable for centuries.
The US Project Pluto tried for an unlimited range nuclear powered, hypersonic cruise missile. The prototype did develop net thrust, but the engineering made it unfeasible, not to mention it's lethal radioactive exhaust.
That was over 50 years ago. I would have to be convinced that new materials technology and computerized control had not solved some of those problems.
Even so, there are countermeasures for pretty much any weapons system. We just have to be willing to develop them.
7
Unlikely that a nuclear reactor would be effective in terms of tactical value, and cost, because of weight alone, in powering a "cruise missile" due to the trade off with the size, weight of the explosive payload.
Also, as appears to be the case, Russia has learned that a failed launch of a chemical powered rocket that has a nuclear power source or device as part of the propulsion system that is not hardened to survive one, takes out the entire area where it happens. NASA hardened its RTGs, which supplied electrical power only, for this reason.
3
Guess climate change won't do the job fast enough for some people. It would be great if we could take a look at the underlying political issues that make the US and Russia point missiles at each other to begin with. Military technology has a nasty habit of getting used--no matter how nasty the technology. And once the technology itself becomes the political issue, then we are seriously tempting fate.
In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: “There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time."
Perhaps, de Tocqueville's brilliant prescience implied that the two nations would inevitably be yoked against each other. But Russia was also the one nation that committed actual military support to the United States during its greatest existential crisis: the Civil War. Certainly, over 156 years nations and their interests change; but knowing that fact, shouldn't we entertain the possibility that we might find some common purpose in the future--like allowing each other to have one?
29
Russia fires nuclear powered cruise missile, North Korea fires off short range missiles, Trump plays golf and tweets having canceled the nuclear proliferation treaty.
162
@Prunella, Russia fires nuclear powered cruise missile, North Korea fires off short range missiles, Trump plays golf and tweets that the real threat is law abiding, hard working immigrants.
3
@Prunella
Distractions-R-Rus
Russia's nuclear-powered cruise missile, a throwback to crazy-sounding Cold War weapons tech, is back. The Burevestnik (“Storm Petrel”) is designed to evade U.S. defenses, flying for days to exploit holes in missile defense networks. Russia hadn't tested the weapon in nearly a year—until last week, that is.
"Hey, look over here at my shiny object!"
If you want to know what Russia has really developed, look at what they don't want to talk about, so much.
There have been cryptic clues over the years that Perimeter still exists. Which illustrates one of the curiosities of this system, which is that the Soviet Union kept its existence secret from the American enemy whom it was supposed to deter. If Russia is now discussing Perimeter publicly, that’s reason for the rest of us to worry.
Viktor Yesin, who commanded Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces in the 1990s, spoke of Perimeter/Dead Hand:
Yesin: "The Perimeter system is functioning, it has even been improved. But when it works, we will have little left - we can only launch those missiles that will survive after the first attack of the aggressor."
Putin needs Trump, in order to stand down after a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Looks like everything is working as planned, and operational status is still, 'Go!'
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-dead-hand-nuclear-doomsday-weapon-back-38492
Dr. Strangelove - Doomsday Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozg7gEchjuM
And yet we have candidates for president who love in a utopian fantasy and who if in charge would cripple our ability to respond to a threat.
6
@Stefan Like coddling dictators? Or, abrogating treaties without thought of renegotiation? Or, pulling out of existing nuclear agreements? Like threatening other countries (Iran) without merit?
Those kind of utopian fantasies?
9
And we have another one who is, at least in part, responsible for the threat.
Thanks to Trump pulling out of Nuclear Agreements with Russia; what does one expect? Russia is now building nuclear weapons and they just paid for it by creating a mini Chernobyl.
Of course, the US will now respond by trying to match Russia's weaponry. Most likely we already are. And we will have more super fund site like Rocky Flats spring up.
Thus, North Korea was a ruse, by Trump, to turn a blind eye to Russia starting a new arms race. To Trump, this means more jobs to "Make America Great Again" building bombs.
9
@Nick Metrowsky This missile has nothing to do with the missiles that were covered by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. In fact, this missile is as long range as it gets.
Not to mention, Russia had been flouting the INF treaty for so long that the US really didn't have a choice but to back out.
5
Didn’t you read the article? The treaties don’t cover this kind of missile. No one contemplated its development. This looks like a desperation play by Putin. Trump taunted him about an arms race, telling him he would lose. It’s even better when Russia spends money on failing projects. And it means they know they can’t win without a long shot.
Where does this end? With thousands of nuclear weapons deployed and stored around the globe, it is only a matter of time before one of them explodes accidentally, making this accident look minor. And then there is the possibility that some foolish world leader or subordinate down the chain of command will decide to use a nuclear weapon intentionally. As long as we have nuclear weapons, our long term survival as a species is seriously in doubt.
31
@E
Who would bring children into this world with such a bleak future.
Thanks to Trump, about all we can guarantee our them is daily mass shootings, cataclysmic environmental disasters and the increasing threat of nuclear obliteration.
5
"As long as we have nuclear weapons, our long term survival as a species is seriously in doubt."
AMEN!!
1
Obviously this was a nuclear accident -- and just like with Chernobyl the Russian reaction was to cover it up and lie about it initially until the radiation spike was recorded and it was known that the pharmacies in the towns around the site were overwhelmed by people requesting iodine tablets. Then we heard two were dead, then five, now seven and who knows how many are suffering radiation sickness and will eventually die.
Life is cheap in Russia and their "go to" position -- as with Putin's puppet Trump -- is the lie and the cover up.
31
Let's keep in mind that Russian GDP is less than the GDP of Texas or New York state.
Russian GDP is also smaller than the combined state GDPs of Pennsylvania and Georgia.
We do not need to 'maintain' an arms race with a small corrupt oligarchic nation like Russian.
What Russia is great at is state propaganda, official lies and gaslighting....(which coincidentally is also the entire Republican electoral strategy).
That's what we need to defend against.
308
@Socrates Yes, but this country with such a small GDP is capable of wiping out the US from the face of this planet in about 30 minutes.
25
@Socrates
"Distractions-R-Rus"
It goes without saying that Avangard is capable of striking United States territory, and that it can’t be successfully intercepted. But so what? That’s true of any Russian I.C.B.M.
Another of Mr. Putin’s wunderwaffes is the Zirkon missile, a hypersonic ship killer with a 250-mile range. It’s hard to say what it’s like: Every time Russian officials boast about it, they post a photo of America’s hypersonic Boeing X52 Waverider.
"Hey, look over here!"
If you want to know what Russia is really developing, look at wht they don't want to talk about.
There have been cryptic clues over the years that Perimeter still exists. Which illustrates one of the curiosities of this system, which is that the Soviet Union kept its existence secret from the American enemy whom it was supposed to deter.
What is unmistakable is that Perimeter is a fear-based solution. Fear of a U.S. first-strike that would decapitate the Russian leadership before it could give the order to retaliate. Fear that a Russian leader might lose his nerve and not give the order.
And if Russia is now discussing Perimeter publicly, that’s reason for the rest of us to worry.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-dead-hand-nuclear-doomsday-weapon-back-38492
Tell that to the gas-lighter in chief.
To so many of the commenters: I want Trump out as much as anyone. But -
(1) The Russians are the ones developing this missile, and not in response to an American development;
(2) The Russians started during the Obama administration;
(3) When the US was still following all treaties;
(4) And in any event, as the article states, the missile is not covered under any treaty, so withdrawing from other treaties is meaningless.
So - as much as I want Trump out, everything in the world isn’t his fault. The Russians are really dangerous, especially with Putin as their dictator. That’s not Trump’s fault.
50
@Stephen - but it is Trump’s job to respond to these threats. How likely in the middle of the “Trump chaos” that there will be any coherent policy??? I’m betting on zero..
15
@Stephen As to your point 1. you forgot Bush/US unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001 so the US could deploy those banned missiles aimed at Russia from Poland and Romania and give the US a Nuclear 1st Strike advantage.
It was the US that started this latest round of an arms race.
9
@Stephen
What is his fault is that they are being allowed to become even more dangerous. With no checks as Trump really wants that hotel to go up in Moscow. Lets hope once it does, he goes there and stays in it. Permanently!
8
Leave Russia alone. Let them continue testing, experimenting. If they succeed in this new propulsion system, we can save our country billions, save us from the accidents- and just steal the perfected technology when they finish. If it fails, we save ourselves the cost of trying it, for the third time? Win win for us, and other countries that will also steal the finished product.
5
Notice the stark difference in nuclear priorities; the US sinks billions into missile defense, while Russia prioritizes offensive systems. Such is the difference between our republic and their totalitarian nightmare.
3
They are also developing the defence. The deterrent is a part of defence that worked for many years now. And for all its 'focus on defence' the US is not shy to attack and invade other countries, especially one who could do no harm to the US.
The Russian government was "slow and secretive" when the Chernobyl accident occurred. That government continues to list only a handful of people who died as a result of it.
Why would their "slow and secretive" response be any different now?
Another unsettling and disturbing international scenario since January 1, 2017.
7
Why worry about climate change and natural disasters when the destruction of life on this planet as we know it will inevitably be caused by the obsession of oppression, power and nuclear weapons. The human race has not learned from its past mistakes, the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the globe is alarming. It’s no surprise that Russia and the U.S. are the number one culprits; yet this President withdrew from the nuclear forces treaty with Russia……very smart. Sadly, it’s only a matter of time before other incidents such as this one or worse occurs. The ‘Doomsday’ clock is ticking and now Iran and Korea may join the fray of mass destruction and who knows how many other countries are on the verge of constructing these weapons.
3
Initially, the official death toll at Chernobyl was two. It would take months for a clearer picture of what happened to emerge in the West. It would take years for thousands to die of radiation-related cancers. Let us hope that this situation does not prove to be similarly catastrophic.
13
@Dan Frazier
Its not just the nuclear weaponry for radiation poisoning we have to be concerned with. The recent Fukushima Nuclear Plant in Japan melt down released enormous amounts of radiation into the ocean. We have polluted our Earth’s land, air and waterways with concentrated radioactive materials. Enough to bring on cancers for everyone.
6
The appearance of the White House cooperation with Putin is more obvious each day. The lapse of a nuclear nonproliferation agreement. The testing of nuclear powered nuclear weapons. This timeline seems to be too coincidental. It fits a Putin influenced inaction plan by the office of the President of the United States.
6
Why does Mr. Lewis think it will not work? We certainly used nuclear power in our spacecraft successfully. Would it be a huge step to use them in a missile? It would be expensive but oil money and ego will fund a lot of unnecessary stuff.
1
@SridharC
I also feel like the technical commentary on this comes up short and feels limited -- the US experimented with this and decided it was a non-starter in the 1950s, and in the 21st century it's still technically infeasible, or is just a bad idea because it's a doomsday weapon?
And how does it compare to existing long-distance craft like the X-37 (which has been flown in test flight durations over a year) or the X-51 hypersonic scramjet?
It's not surprising the Soviets are overreaching or that their technical goals may be unobtainable, but it hardly seems like an impossible concept.
Since our withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty in 2001 Russia has felt threatened by a first strike; and this is the result.
When will this madness end? And will it be negotiations for peace or unimaginable disaster. Science can deliver weapons to counter anything another country can deploy--anti-ballistic missiles, anti-anti-ballistic missiles, space-based missiles, robot drones, and weaponized cryptography.
But we the people have no say. If we did, we would reinstate the ABM treaty of 2001 and the intermediate-range treaty we pulled out of last year and the broken Iran agreement. There is no light at the end of the tunnel of the arms race.
37
With Trump, Putin, and others we have gone back to the era of little boys playing badly in the sandbox with very dangerous toys. Let’s hope that at least we can add a grown up to the equation in the next elections.
62
The challenge for America is how to bring Russia and China closer. This endeavor is made more difficult - if not impossible - by sanctions and tariffs. From their point of view America looks like an economic bully. Meanwhile, they're both working hard to match our military might. Whatever it was that happened in Russia last Thursday we should be concerned. Is our rhetoric, sanctions and tariffs fueling their efforts? Are we sanctimonious? They think so. America needs to embrace diplomacy and reality simultaneously. Bullying won't work. We need a new way of thinking. One that doesn't see America as the worlds moral high-ground. One that Trump could never imagine.
6
@Aurora The "endeavor", as you put it, to bring us closer to Russia and China was not stymied by sanctions and tariffs. In China's case, it was brought on by their continual intellectual property spying/theft and artificial protectionist policies designed to elevate their homegrown industrial complex over the rest of the world. In Russia's case, their annexation of South Ossetia from Georgia, then Crimea from Ukraine and then backing of Syria's President's genocide against his own people earned them the United States and then the world's distain. All of those things took place way before Trump's presidency, not before and if anything, he's gone easy on both China and Russia, and not firm enough for most of the rest of the world's liking. Then there's Russia's interference with the elections in 2016 which no reputable news organization will deny. If you wish to point fingers, I suggest pointing them back at China and Russia for their poor behavior and encourage them to work to redeem their deeds by abandoning their past conduct on the world stage.
1
Putin threatens us on so many levels. Our society, it’s culture of fairness, and now our physical existence. How he manages to fly under the radar on these is the mystery of our time. Historians will engage in serious head scratching as to how he pulled it all off.
Orwell probably wouldn’t be as mystified.
10
It seems to me that no country should have nuclear weapons -- including the United States. How can we ask other countries to give up weapons if we are not willing to do so? Surely world economies and societies would benefit if there were a general disarmament.
40
@JSS Sadly history determined why the US has nuclear weapons today. What happened to Japan because of this is truly horrific and sad, and possibly one bombing was all that was necessary, however the reason this is happening now is solely due to Trump reneging/leaving the treaty on nuclear arms. So blame him will you.
3
Japan was reeling on the verge of surrender under the onslaught of 500 B-29s every night. These bombs were dropped on live cities preserved from bombing so that the US could compare the effects of uranium and plutonium bombs on intact cities.
3
The best possible outcome of creating these weapons is further expense to decommission them.
2
I am reminded of a quote from the 1983 nuclear war movie “The Day After”: “Stupidity has a habit of getting its way.”
77
@Damian McColl
Distractions-R-Rus
Russia's nuclear-powered cruise missile, a throwback to crazy-sounding Cold War weapons tech, is back. The Burevestnik (“Storm Petrel”) is designed to evade U.S. defenses. Russia hadn't tested the weapon in nearly a year—until last week, that is. The missile is known to the U.S. as the SSC-X-9 “Skyfall.”
"Hey, look over here at my shiny object!"
If you want to know what Russia has really developed, look at what they don't want to talk about, so much.
There have been cryptic clues over the years that Perimeter still exists. Which illustrates one of the curiosities of this system, which is that the Soviet Union kept its existence secret from the American enemy whom it was supposed to deter. If Russia is now discussing Perimeter publicly, that’s reason for the rest of us to worry.
Viktor Yesin, who commanded Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces in the 1990s, spoke of Perimeter/Dead Hand:
Yesin: "The Perimeter system is functioning, it has even been improved. But when it works, we will have little left - we can only launch those missiles that will survive after the first attack of the aggressor."
Putin needs Trump, in order to stand down after a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Looks like everything is working as planned, and operational status is still, 'Go!'
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-dead-hand-nuclear-doomsday-weapon-back-38492
Dr. Strangelove - Doomsday Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozg7gEchjuM
“Racing”? Really? Is our intelligence that bad? I have been reading about new Russian middles for over a year.
@Richard Winchester
Yes. Look at our intelligence agencies populated by trump supporters. They are not known for intelligence.
3
Wouldn't Putin be helping his country more by raising the low standard of living in Russia? Instead the must have his toys. He already has enough weaponry to damage the world beyond repair. The false dreams of how great the USSR once was haunts him and hurts his nation.
88
@David With more than half of Americans unable to raise $400 for an emergency, shouldn't the Leader of the Free World lead by by reducing the most bloated defense budget in the history of the Nations, already over 10 times what Russia spends on defense?
17
Classic Soviet move - create other distractions so they forget about how bad things are. Putin and his inner circle only care about robbing the country blind, not making it better for all.
11
@David, Putin, like McConnell, cares only about power. Why talk to him about the low standard of living in Russia? Not his concern, never was, never will be.
As long as nations are led by men like Trump and Putin, we can expect the worst possible scenarios to emerge.
299
@Rodger Parsons, Putin, yes. Trump, no. One is unhindered by checks and balances; the other is. We'd be in a war with Iran now if he had his way.
4
It seems the worst possible men are best at politics in both nations. It is as if our political systems are selecting for the most ignorant and barbarian leaders. I wonder why?
4
@John Bockman
LOL...those "checks & balances" have left the train station a while ago...thank the trumpsters & McConnells.
2
Well certainly, Trump will want the same toys.
12
@cfc, not now. He can't afford to have a similar accident in the US.
It is widely believed by historians of the old Soviet Union that lies about Chernobyl--outright mistruths that needlessly put the lives of others at risk, and certainly concealed the horror of the tragedy--contributed to the final meltdown of the Soviet state.
One can only hope that similar efforts by Putinist autocracy will contribute to its eventual demise.
The Russian people certainly deserve better than Vladimir Putin and his cronies,
105
@Paul McGlasson
Distractions-R-Rus
Russia's nuclear-powered cruise missile, a throwback to crazy-sounding Cold War weapons tech, is back. The Burevestnik (“Storm Petrel”) is designed to evade U.S. defenses. Russia hadn't tested the weapon in nearly a year—until last week, that is. The missile is known to the U.S. as the SSC-X-9 “Skyfall.”
"Hey, look over here at my shiny object!"
If you want to know what Russia has really developed, look at what they don't want to talk about, so much.
There have been cryptic clues over the years that Perimeter still exists. Which illustrates one of the curiosities of this system, which is that the Soviet Union kept its existence secret from the American enemy whom it was supposed to deter. If Russia is now discussing Perimeter publicly, that’s reason for the rest of us to worry.
Viktor Yesin, who commanded Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces in the 1990s, spoke of Perimeter/Dead Hand:
Yesin: "The Perimeter system is functioning, it has even been improved. But when it works, we will have little left - we can only launch those missiles that will survive after the first attack of the aggressor."
Putin needs Trump, in order to stand down after a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Looks like everything is working as planned, and operational status is still, 'Go!'
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-dead-hand-nuclear-doomsday-weapon-back-38492
Dr. Strangelove - Doomsday Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozg7gEchjuM
Russia never changes. As Helmut Schmidt said it remains Upper Volta with nuclear missiles and a more or less permanent foe of the USA. It is this that makes so disturbing the willingness of the Republican party to cover up its attacks on the integrity of our political system.
210
Distractions-R-Rus
Russia's nuclear-powered cruise missile, a throwback to crazy-sounding Cold War weapons tech, is back. The Burevestnik (“Storm Petrel”) is designed to evade U.S. defenses, flying for days to exploit holes in missile defense networks. Russia hadn't tested the weapon in nearly a year—until last week, that is. The missile is known to the U.S. intelligence community as the KY30, or the SSC-X-9 “Skyfall.”
"Hey, look over here at my shiny object!"
If you want to know what Russia has really developed, look at what they don't want to talk about, so much.
There have been cryptic clues over the years that Perimeter still exists. Which illustrates one of the curiosities of this system, which is that the Soviet Union kept its existence secret from the American enemy whom it was supposed to deter. If Russia is now discussing Perimeter publicly, that’s reason for the rest of us to worry.
Viktor Yesin, who commanded Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces in the 1990s, spoke of Perimeter/Dead Hand:
Yesin: "The Perimeter system is functioning, it has even been improved. But when it works, we will have little left - we can only launch those missiles that will survive after the first attack of the aggressor."
Putin needs Trump, in order to stand down after a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Looks like everything is working as planned, and operational status is still, 'Go!'
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-dead-hand-nuclear-doomsday-weapon-back-38492
So many mistakes for Putin . The naval disaster , the explosions, no clear explanation, the lack of coverage. Silence of Trump administration. Is it all tied to pulling out recently by Trump admin from past treaties and understanding. Would not be surprised to see an incident in Syria.
17
What could possibly be gained by attacking the US with nuclear missiles? We do not have that much in the way of critical minerals to exploit and Donald is doing all he can to poison our water. The only real advantage would be to take out our government and our military. We could remove that threat by simply stopping our "interference" in other countries' affairs. We really do need to simply get back to the basics.
6
If the US was out of the way, Vlad would be marching into Ukraine tomorrow, Poland next week, and quickly rebuild the USSR. That is why he wants the US and NATO out of the way. That is why he supported a US candidate that was opposed to NATO.
6
@Ken Sayers, so we go back to the basics, and Russia takes out our government and military nonetheless. What do we do then? Start singing the Russian national anthem?
The more we think we know, the less we know.
Just think, if Reagan's star wars defense had been finished back in the 80's this would not be a problem.
@Sparky Jones. "The more we think we know, the less we know." Reagan's space-based star wars would not be effective against cruise missiles that never leave the atmosphere.
15
@Sparky Jones that particular defense system could not have been built because there was not enough available water in the Southwest USA to mix the massive amount of concrete needed for the thousands of miles of tunnels. It was a fantasy and a ruse.
6
@Sparky Jones - The whole purpose of this new missile class is that it is impervious to space-based systems like the Reagan “Star Wars” initiative.
4
And how are the Russian's going to fund
this? Our defense budget is nearly 1/2 of their entire GDP.
More importantly what is our
strategy to help a nuclear superpower
from collapsing when the world pivots
away from oil because last I checked
they still do provide goods and services
that the world's consumers want.
5
A great report with some interesting details.
I toured Chernobyl a few years back.
On the long bus ride from Kiev - they showed us a video of that incident and how Kremlin handled it or more, how they attempted to cover it.
The video said that even Gorbachev was not told the real picture for a few days.
Many residents in Chernobyl were not told of seriousness over the accident.
And within a few days - were hastily removed.
It's quite a sobering visit.
So, one issue with this report is Chernobyl causing thousands of deaths.
Actual explosion killed some 40 workers.
Radiation related deaths have never been counted accurately but most scientific reports do not support "thousands of deaths".
19
@Neil, You may have taken the tour but that doesn't mean you got the whole truth. There were some 600,000 "Liquidators" who processed through all things Chernobyl to bury, cover, remove the affected areas and things there and many of those people have died early. Even the conservative W.H.O. list the deaths caused by Chernobyl at over 4000.
7
The scientific consensus is 54 immediate deaths and 4000 long term deaths. There are higher and lower estimates, but the further you get away from 4000, the further you delve into fringe science.
4
@Neil
The reason for that delay? First, senior officers at the Chernobyl plant had to accept that something terrible had happened. They had ignored all warnings and flaws during the buildling process and blindly believed in the superiority of their design.
Then they had to overcome the tradition of only telling superiors what they wanted to hear and protecting themselves. It was, literally, impossible for them to tell the truth even after the world knew of the extent of the problem. To this day they blame the 2 junior operators when it was a design flaw that allowed a simple test to turn into a nuclear disaster.
For an in-depth picture of what actually happened, I would suggest reading "Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster" by Adam Higginbotham
4
While I have a problem with scrapping nuclear treaties that reduce the limits of certain classes of weapons, the idea is often to push your opponent into spending beyond their capabilities to add financial stress. By itself it seldom sufficient, but if other events are causing stress - financial and social - it can push things too far. (In other words, it is often less about the shiny new weapon system, and more about pushing your opponent. These things have to be looked at - partially at least - through that lens.)
5
The explosion at Chernobyl did not kill thousands. Only two people died in the blast, and the United Nations determined that fewer than 100 people died from radiation exposure. It is yet to be determined how many may eventually die from the exposure, though those estimates could in fact be in the thousands.
15
@Ned Wharton - UN, IAEA, and World Health Organization (WHO) estimates of a total 4,000 deaths due to disaster-related illnesses in "the higher-exposed Chernobyl populations". So, yes, thousands, and that is probably a low estimate since may be an additional many thousands of deaths unaccounted for from among the 600,000 "liquidators" who were drafted into the immediate cleanup effort. The UN estimate of short-term (first month) deaths was 54.
56
@Ned Wharton
Where in the world did you get your information? Maybe only two died in the initial blast, however at least 35-40 more died later at a hospital in Moscow that specialized in treatment of radiation exposure. Also there were literally hundreds of thousands of workers who tried to “clean up” Chernobyl, who were all exposed to extremely high levels of radiation. This doesn't even count the thousands who were in the fallout path. No one will ever know for sure, however it is extremely likely that over time there were thousands who died prematurely because of exposure to radiation. If someone died of thyroid cancer three years after Chernobyl, was that a natural occurrence or due to exposure to excess radiation? Unfortunately, the apparatchiks were way more interested in covering up the disaster than they were with tracking the results of the disaster.
14
There is amazing and frightening video footage of this explosion on the internet. It is the first imagery of a nuclear explosion occurring within range of civilian homes. Truly iconic.
7
Lesson for the USA: when a powerful central figure fantasizes about a new military item, then tries to make it real, it will fail. This is in the tradition of Stalin’ s failed canal from the white sea to the Baltic ( completed with gulag labor) which turned out to be not deep enough to float heavy ships. Or Stalin’s folly in Sevastapol with the underground nuclear sub refueling station, which incorporated a turn which was too tight to be useful with the new generation of submarines which were on-line when it was completed.
12
@Working doc. And let’s not forget the holey Star Wars defense system that was supposed to overthrow the mutual assured destruction defense.
3
The most disturbing part of this article is that our President would be unable to read and comprehend it to completion. The fate of the Western world relies on security briefings delivered via color-coded PowerPoint. I'm sure all this Putin business will turn out just fine.
350
@Spencer Moore
Distractions-R-Rus
Russia's nuclear-powered cruise missile, a throwback to crazy-sounding Cold War weapons tech, is back. Whether it'll ever work is a separate issue.
The Burevestnik (“Storm Petrel”) is designed to evade U.S. defenses, flying for hours or even days to exploit holes in missile defense networks that most weapons can’t reach. Russia hadn't tested the weapon in nearly a year—until last week, that is. The missile is known to the U.S. intelligence community as the KY30, or the SSC-X-9 “Skyfall.”
"Hey, look over here at my shiny object!"
If you want to know what Russia has really developed, look at what they don't want to talk about, so much.
There have been cryptic clues over the years that Perimeter still exists. Which illustrates one of the curiosities of this system, which is that the Soviet Union kept its existence secret from the American enemy whom it was supposed to deter. If Russia is now discussing Perimeter publicly, that’s reason for the rest of us to worry.
Viktor Yesin, who commanded Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces in the 1990s, spoke of Perimeter/Dead Hand:
Yesin: "The Perimeter system is functioning, it has even been improved. But when it works, we will have little left - we can only launch those missiles that will survive after the first attack of the aggressor."
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-dead-hand-nuclear-doomsday-weapon-back-38492
@Spencer Moore
Viktor Yesin, who commanded Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces in the 1990s, spoke of Perimeter/Dead Hand during an interview last month in the Russian newspaper Zvezda. Yesin said that if the United States starts deploying intermediate-range missiles in Europe, Russia will consider adopting a doctrine of a preemptive nuclear strike. But he also added this:
Zvezda: "Will we have time to answer if the flight time is reduced to two to three minutes when deploying medium-range missiles near our borders? In this version, all hope is only on Perimeter. And for a retaliatory strike. Or was Perimeter also disassembled for parts?
Yesin: "The Perimeter system is functioning, it has even been improved. But when it works, we will have little left - we can only launch those missiles that will survive after the first attack of the aggressor."
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/russias-dead-hand-nuclear-doomsday-weapon-back-38492
@Spencer Moore
What's more, this President only pays attention to such briefings when his own name is mentioned in the subject matter.
2
At one time Cherynobyl was hailed as a centerpiece of Russia's nuclear power prowess. There is one set of facts conveyed to the world and another reflecting the slipshod and questionable Russian nuclear capabilities.
26
Yes, this is a long-term threat. But there are MANY, MANY more threats to our daily existence for which the US is responsible. For example, our overt wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our covert wars in Africa, Asia and other countries in the Middle East. We are increasing the environmental damage to the planet on a daily basis because waaaaayyy too many Americans have gas-guzzling SUVs and eat meat for every meal.
So yes, there is a need to adapt to this new reality, but your neighbors with guns are more of a threat to you and your family than anything Russia is doing.
111
@Walter
This comment is why I love the NYT. A reality check that is right on point.
The most worrying thing, a previous comment that our current POTUS would deny the intelligence reports or not understand them.
Good job Walter.
14
@Walter And yes, this is just a rather small article among hundreds. Sure, we're "worse" than the Russians. And there are plenty of daily threats, not the least of which are guns, health care, car safety, etc., that legitimately need to be worried about.
With that said, most of us are old enough to remember the Cold War. I for one would prefer NOT to see, once again, how close we can come to obliterating civilization in the blink of an eye.
Perhaps we can stayed focused on that for one relatively small article?
9
@Walter I agree with the damage from cars as they burn fissile fuel. But cows eat plants that contain already (!) existing carbon from the atmosphere, so there is no net emission of carbon. The methane does not live long, less than 10 years, and disintegrates into CO2 (that already existed there before turning into plants),
2
Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are too dangerous, too lethal and too expensive. Instead of spending trillions of dollars on a new generation of nuclear weapons and delivery systems as Russia and the United States threaten to do, our political leaders should create a new generation of nuclear weapons treaties. Weapons treaties, well crafted and verifiable do work.
When our political leaders fail to address the existential threat of nuclear weapons then voters and the media must make the reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons a priority.
Mark Muhich
Sierra Club Nuclear Free Core Team
146
@Mark Muhich, the first rational response on this list.
3
@Mark Muhich, I agree 100%. Well said!
@Mark Muhich Nuclear war is inevitable, as long as nuclear weapons exist. We didn't destroy ours when the Soviet Union collapsed. We are partially responsible for this mess.
1
9 Billion People on the planet have to eat, everyday. I can't even begin to fathom this diabolical endeavor.
A nuclear war, even a limited one results in the following
a)1/3 die in the explosion
b) 1/3 die of radiation sickness
c) 1/3 die of starvation
There are countries that can not afford to fund infrastructure, efficient food production, sufficient health care but somehow fund this? After all of these years of abundant information about nuclear arms and the affects, we've learned and now apparently forgotten. Increasingly devolving into isolation, ignorance and nationalism. Allowing an alarming group of world leaders, fueled with pride and self absorption to put us and the rest of the world's population at risk of nuclear weapons use, either by direction or happenstance. I'm sure the Moon or Mars will be great places to live.
No doubt these same world leaders have worked that out right? Yeah, I'm sure of it.
92
@TerryZ
Currently, there are 7.7 billion of us, which is predicted to become 9.7 billion by 2050.
If one third of present global population disappeared, thus 2.5 billion, then that would leave five billion, which is well on the way to fix the emission of greenhouse gases, climate change, global warming and destruction of this planet.
Don't knock the feckless fools and knaves like Putin and Trump who control our world.
Under their clueless, irresponsible, and criminally negligent watch, the mass destruction of the human species is gonna be the only thing that might save planet Earth.
20
@Colenso said "... the mass destruction of the human species is gonna be the only thing that might save planet Earth."
Earth has been around for an estimated 4.5 billion years.
Human history on Earth is a blip in time. Humans have been around less than a million years of those estimated 4.5 billion years, or less than 2 hundreths of 1 percent of the time Earth has existed. By way of comparison, in my 70+ years of life, the same relative amount of time would be about 5 to 6 days, or roughly the same time that one has the typical common cold.
Long after humans are gone, by whatever event, an accident, a large enough meteor hitting Earth, some virulent disease for which we do not find a cure, Earth will go on "doing its thing."
Don't worry about the Earth.
Worry about the stupid things that humans do that will harm us as a society in the next 100 years.
12
@Colenso, lighten up, man! So the earth will be saved when all of us are gone. Very encouraging. Should we do nothing and let it happen? I should hope not.
3