Burevestnik

Russia's experimental nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile of claimed effectively unlimited range, designed to evade missile defenses through low-altitude, circuitous flight — not yet in service and plagued by a troubled test record.

Overview

The 9M730 Burevestnik ("Storm Petrel"), assigned the NATO reporting name SSC-X-9 Skyfall, is a Russian experimental intercontinental-range cruise missile propelled by a miniature nuclear reactor and armed with a nuclear warhead. It is the only known weapon of its kind — a concept the United States itself proved and abandoned with Project Pluto (1957–1964) over radiological and safety concerns. Publicly unveiled by Vladimir Putin on 1 March 2018 as one of six "super weapons" positioned explicitly as a counter to U.S. missile defense, the Burevestnik has since become one of the most intensely scrutinized — and controversial — strategic systems under development, widely nicknamed the "flying Chernobyl" by critics, according to Wikipedia. It has never entered service and has never been used in combat.

Development

Russia reportedly began work on an intercontinental nuclear-powered cruise missile in December 2001, following the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, reviving a Soviet-era concept, according to an analysis by CSIS. Development is attributed by Russian press to the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (VNIIEF) in Sarov, with manufacture linked to NPO Novator in Yekaterinburg, though neither designation has been officially confirmed. Flight testing began around 2016 from a dedicated rail-ramp launch complex at Pan'kovo on Novaya Zemlya, with the first known flight in November 2017 covering approximately 35 km in two minutes before crashing into the Barents Sea — assessed by the U.S. intelligence community as the only moderately successful early shot, per Wikipedia. A missile lost at sea in 2017 required a recovery effort, and on 8 August 2019 a failed "isotope power source" test at Nyonoksa killed five Rosatom scientists and caused a radiation spike in nearby Severodvinsk — an accident widely linked by open-source analysts and U.S. officials to recovery work on a sunken Burevestnik reactor. Testing visibly resumed at Pan'kovo in August 2021, when satellite imagery analyzed by the Middlebury Institute's Jeffrey Lewis and CNS showed an erected environmental shelter and launcher activity, as documented by Arms Control Wonk. On 5 October 2023, Putin claimed a successful test, though no independent confirmation followed. The program's landmark event came on 21 October 2025, when Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov reported to Putin that the missile had flown 14,000 km in roughly 15 hours with "vertical and horizontal maneuvers," a claim relayed by the Arms Control Association. In May 2026 Putin stated the missile was in its "final stages" of development, and Russian press has pointed to adoption no sooner than 2027 — all deployment-timing claims remain Russian-side and unverified, according to Al Jazeera.

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