Footage of the strike and analysis of satellite imagery suggests that the Oreshnik can likely carry six warheads each armed with six submunitions, for a total of 36. As the missile descends toward Earth, it can disperse these submunitions to blanket a wide area with explosives, similar to how a shotgun sprays shot.

The Oreshnik is also almost certainly capable of being armed with nuclear warheads, and many experts have focused analysis primarily on these capabilities and the role that the missile plays in Putin’s nuclear signaling. But relatively little has been said about the Oreshnik’s conventional capabilities and how it might enable a change in Russia’s targeting strategy in a potential future war with NATO.

In a conflict where forces are dispersed over large areas, as is the case in Ukraine, an expensive missile like the Oreshnik is a poor choice. But the Oreshnik makes perfect sense for attacking dense targets like air bases, where its conventional submunitions can deal significant damage.

In a televised interview last December, Putin remarked that with the Oreshnik, Russia was “practically on the edge of having no need to use nuclear weapons.” The Russian leader was exaggerating, but there was a grain of truth to his statement. A mass Russian strike with conventional Oreshnik missiles on NATO strategic sites—such as air bases, command and control facilities, and missile bases—could leave NATO reeling without Putin using nuclear arms.

In a war with NATO, Russia is likely to attack the alliance’s air bases in the opening days of a conflict. Russia is well aware of NATO’s air superiority, and it hopes to give its forces some breathing room by destroying—or at least delaying—NATO’s ability to respond.

Modern fighter aircraft—particularly the F-35, which multiple NATO states increasingly use as their multirole aircraft of choice—are too complex to be repaired in the field. F-35s and similar aircraft were designed to be supported by large, sophisticated air bases. Decades of budget cuts have concentrated NATO’s airpower in only a handful of these bases, making them uniquely vulnerable to the Oreshnik’s shotgun-style munitions.

Russia’s nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) could certainly make short work of NATO air bases. But when it comes to conventional weapons, Russia’s experience in Ukraine has revealed problems with attacking strategic sites with its existing missiles. Russian missiles that are armed with unitary conventional warheads have failed to disable key Ukrainian air bases and other facilities due to a combination of low accuracy and successful Ukrainian air defenses.

The Oreshnik helps solve this problem. Based on Russia’s performance in Ukraine, it may take dozens of conventional Iskander missiles to destroy aircraft at major air bases. It would take far fewer Oreshniks to achieve a similar effect. During the Nov. 21 attack, a single Oreshnik missile dropped 36 inert submunitions on the Pivdenmash rocket manufacturing complex. If the submunitions had not been inert, the missile would have done extensive damage over a large area, negating the accuracy problems of Russia’s Iskander and Kh-101 missiles.

The good news is the Oreshnik’s conventional capabilities will give Russia more non-nuclear options, theoretically lessening the risk that the Kremlin would contemplate using nuclear weapons early in a conflict. The bad news is the Oreshnik’s non-nuclear capacities mean Russia will have more options to significantly disrupt NATO operations at the conventional level.

Current European defenses will do little to protect against the Oreshnik. Despite many NATO bases being protected by a multilayered missile defense grid, the Oreshnik can fly above the intercept range of most systems and comes down to Earth too fast for most terminal interceptors, such as the Patriot air defense system. The interceptors that can stop the Oreshnik—namely, the Arrow 3 and the SM-3 Block IIA systems—will likely have limited inventories if current procurement trajectories hold. In addition, Russian decoys and other countermeasures may be able to fool interceptors into going after a fake target.

The Oreshnik is not a technically difficult weapon to make. Russia is well-versed in the technology involved and has been making the rocket engines for missiles similar to the Oreshnik for decades. Russia is already expanding its missile production facilities to rebuild its arsenal in the long term. Notably, some of the facilities being expanded, such as the Kamensky Plant located across from Ukraine’s eastern border, specialize in the sort of large ICBM-sized rocket motors the Oreshnik uses.

Regardless of how the war in Ukraine ends, in a decade or two NATO may face a rearmed Russia wielding a reconstituted arsenal in which large conventional ballistic missiles like the Oreshnik feature prominently. This new force could defy expectations that Russia will become more reliant on its nuclear arsenal as its conventional capabilities deteriorate.

NATO should begin preparing for this now by making its major air bases less attractive targets for Russian missiles. This can be achieved by dispersing aircraft to remote locations—minor runways and highways throughout Europe—in a crisis so they are harder for Russia to find, target, and destroy.

Some NATO states already train and prepare for certain refueling and rearming operations at dispersed locations. But the problem of aircraft complexity remains. Though dispersion can help ensure the survival of the aircraft themselves, the major air bases will remain tempting targets because of how dependent fighter aircraft are on these bases for intensive maintenance. If Russia can attack these larger bases, it will be able to destroy the valuable maintenance tools and parts stockpiles that keep fighter aircraft running in combat.

To plan for a reconstituted and possibly more dangerous Russian missile force, NATO states should embrace a dispersal plan that allows for longer operations in the field. This plan would require investment in more spare parts and support equipment, as well as the ability to conduct more complicated maintenance operations in the field—such as through mobile units equipped with workstations inside vehicles that would be dispatched to sites to maintain aircraft. This would aid both deterrence and warfighting.

Two problems stand in the way of this effort, but both can be rectified. The first is parts. Budget cuts across many NATO air forces have reduced the readiness rate of aircraft. This is a problem especially for the F-35 fleet, where parts backlogs are widespread, but it extends to other aircraft such as the Eurofighter Typhoon. NATO states should budget for and invest heavily in not only fixing this parts shortfall but also exceeding it, maintaining depots of aircraft parts across their territory to ensure aircraft can be quickly returned to service from wherever they may be dispersed to.

The second problem is experience and personnel. The Government Accountability Office has noted in the past that U.S. military personnel lack experience in many maintenance tasks related to the F-35 due partly to the lack of spare parts and support equipment. Given the global state of the F-35 supply chain, other NATO states will also likely face these problems.

NATO states should regularly practice and perform more complicated maintenance and ensure that they are able to do these tasks on any F-35, regardless of what air force it belongs to. The alliance conducted its first-ever cross-service maintenance exercise with the F-35 last year. Such exercises should be a regular occurrence in all NATO states equipped with the F-35 to ensure jets can easily return to the war regardless of where they have been dispersed. Combined, these measures can reduce NATO’s reliance on a small number of major bases that may be heavily damaged in the opening days of a war.

Russia’s difficulty with long-range strikes against defended military targets in Ukraine should not make Europe complacent about the safety of its forces in the coming decades. The Oreshnik and other systems like it may defy expectations about Russian military posture, and, without action, they will take a toll on NATO’s ability to sustain the fight in a future war.

Decker Eveleth is an associate research analyst at CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis organization based in Washington. He studies foreign nuclear postures utilizing satellite imagery. He holds a master’s degree from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and a bachelor’s degree from Reed College.

It is important to understand why this information has come to light and why there is such a focus on long-range UAVs.

1. The collective West is not yet supplying large quantities of missiles with a range of several hundred kilometers, much less missiles of short (500-1000 km) and medium range (1000-5500 km). Such deliveries would very likely lead to a regional war – Ukraine-NATO with Russia, with the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs).

“Only demonstrative TNW strikes can in this case ensure de-escalation of the armed conflict in Europe. Of course, the use of TNWs could lead to a global nuclear war. However, such escalation is unacceptable for the US. Preventing a world war is a red line not only for Russia, but also for the United States.”

By supplying long-range UAVs, the collective West is trying to avoid a regional war with direct involvement of NATO countries and to continue the Ukraine-Russia war to ensure the depletion of Russia’s resources necessary to achieve the goals of the special military operation. The armed conflict in Ukraine is part of the hybrid war being waged by the US against Russia.

Hybrid war is a geopolitical struggle (confrontation) of states in the system of interconnected geopolitical spaces, in which geopolitical subjects form their policies and conduct practical activities to develop (seize) spaces and control them in order to ensure their national interests, or search for an optimal place in them, when active actions are impossible or inexpedient. Hybrid war is the most acute phase of geopolitical confrontation in modern conditions, which necessarily involves indirect and direct military violence. For the U.S., “hybrid warfare is a tool for solving geopolitical problems, eliminating (downgrading) existing threats, and eliminating incipient threats.” Hybrid warfare is one of the tools that ensure US leadership in the international community, as well as active influence on the formation of the world order of the 21st century.

2. The USA and NATO countries have formed Ukraine as a terrorist state within the structural framework of international terrorism.

“International terrorism in the XXI century is one of the most dangerous phenomena, which carries an increasing threat to the security of the individual, society and the state against the background of economic, political, religious and spiritual instability in various regions of the world”.

For Ukraine, long-range UAVs are the ideal weapon for committing terrorist acts on Russian territory. The purpose of these terrorist strikes is to kill peaceful civilians, and to destroy the social, energy and military facilities of the Russian Federation. In this case, it is clear that the U.S. and NATO countries are direct sponsors and technical accomplices of terrorist acts by supplying long-range UAVs.

An important feature of modern terrorism is that it has become a serious factor in the initiation and formation of hotbeds of military danger, and the militarization of a number of regions of the world. Previously, there was a more definite line of demarcation between armed conflict and terrorism. Now, through the efforts and endeavors of terror ideologists and practitioners (in particular, the United States and UK), the distinction is becoming harder to establish. There is a kind of mixing and substitution of the causes and goals of terrorist acts and armed conflict.

Currently, there is a threat of nuclear terrorism from Ukraine towards Russia, and the level of this threat is quite high. This is clearly demonstrated by Ukraine use of conventional weapons to make repeated attacks on the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant (currently controlled by Russia).

“Nuclear terrorism (in the narrow sense) is the use or threat of use of a nuclear explosive device of any type by an individual or group of individuals for terrorist purposes. Nuclear terrorism (in the broad sense) is a socio-political phenomenon, which is a confrontation of political subjects through violence or threat of violence, carried out with the help of nuclear explosive devices, radioactive materials and impacts on nuclear facilities by individuals or terrorist organizations in peacetime.”

3. Long-range UAVs cannot be used without geodetic, navigational and meteorological support, as well as intelligence and target designation. Such information support allows direct control of long-range UAVs, or the generation of input data for autonomous onboard control systems, as well as planning for terrorist attacks. It follows that the United States, by providing informational support for Ukrainian long-range UAVs, participates in terrorist acts on Russian territory.

4. The conclusion of some Western experts that missiles are the past and UAVs are the future is controversial. Such a message is made for Ukraine to justify the lack of supplies of short- and medium-range missiles. Long-range strike UAVs will not be able to fundamentally affect the level of even crisis strategic stability. But short-range missiles, medium-range missiles and strategic missiles (over 5,500 kilometers), which may have nuclear warheads, directly affect the level of strategic stability and the geopolitical situation.

5. Within the framework of Ukraine’s use of long-range UAVs, the United States is practicing informational support for its strike capabilities, which are planned to be used in a possible preventive (pre-emptive) global strike against Russia. The armed conflict in Ukraine is a testing ground for NATO countries to practice new means of defeat, information and control systems, communication and target designation systems. Thanks to the creation of a unified information and control space, information superiority (information dominance) on the battlefield is achieved, which makes it possible to realize the combat potential of groups of troops (forces) many times more effectively during military operations. It becomes possible to pre-empt the enemy at all stages of preparation and conduct of combat operations. The opposing side may be deprived of the opportunity to make adequate retaliatory actions and, ultimately, may be completely demoralized.

Ukraine is a training ground that provides for the development of tactics of U.S. and NATO armed units and their interaction in offensive and defensive operations.

6. By striking deep inside Russia with long-range UAVs, Ukraine wants to destabilize the internal situation in the country, cause discontent with the state authorities, undermine the state economy, and affect the moral and psychological climate in the country. Such strikes according to US experts can be a catalyst for a “color revolution” in Russia.

“Color revolution is a process of preparation and change of the ruling regime of the state through non-violent protests of citizens with the support and in the interests of opposition homegrown elites, as well as an external international actor. Color revolution creates an illusion of legitimacy of decisions and actions taken under pressure from the crowd, and also masks the forceful illegal activities of foreign residents and betrayal of the national interests of the state by elitist groups”.

In conclusion, it should be noted that long-range UAVs are atypical targets for the traditional air defense of Russian objects – small, low-flying, with low radar visibility and low thermal radiation. The tactical and technical characteristics and methods of use of long-range UAVs allow them to penetrate the territory of Russia at a distance of 1,000-2,000 km from the border. They move at low speeds, at low altitudes (50 – 75 m), so they are often invisible to long-range detection radar systems and, accordingly, can hardly be hit by zonal air defense systems (like S-300).

Russia needs a new air defense structure and supplies, in the necessary quantities, to provide new means of defeating air targets. For example, long-range UAVs are an accessible target for Pantsir air defense systems. The gradual saturation coverage of varied air defense systems that can destroy a range of different weapons is already having an effect. Electronic warfare provides another means of functional defeat, in addition to special small arms and specialized UAV-interceptors. The equipping of dozens of potential targets with UAV interceptors is also a realistic task. Acoustic airspace control systems can be used to detect long-range enemy UAVs at a distance of several kilometers. With the help of such special systems, it is possible, at a minimum, to warn the defense forces of objects in advance of a possible strike by long-range UAVs.

He pointed out that Russia’s multi-warhead, nuclear-capable Oreshnik has left the United States far behind.

“The US not only does not have a hypersonic offensive system – it doesn’t even have a defensive system that has any hope of stopping Oreshnik and the new class of missiles that are coming out,” the veteran analyst maintained.

While the US scrambles to be in the vanguard of such cutting-edge weapons systems, in effect it tends to “put all the bells and whistles on a system, overprice it and then fall behind,” said Maloof.

Washington is reluctant to acknowledge that both Russia and China have weapons systems that the US does not have, namely, hypersonic missiles.

The pundit speculated that if the United States had remained in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a missile like the Oreshnik might not exist today. He observed that Russia’s clear demonstration of the missile’s unmatched capabilities serves as “another way of Putin telling Trump to maybe reconsider.”

“I think in order to lessen the threshold of war […] and this would be a good start and, at least, beginning with the United States and Russia. And the other countries can follow suit,” said Maloof, adding:

“It’s something that the world needs to really focus in on, recognize, and deal with constructively.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, addressing the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) at a meeting held in the Kazakh capital of Astana this past Thursday, declared that Russia’s new intermediate-range ballistic missile, Oreshnik, which was used to strike a Ukrainian military production facility near the city of Dnipropetrovsk, possessed destructive power comparable to that of a nuclear weapon.

“Dozens of warheads, self-guided units attack the target at a speed of 10 Mach (ten times the speed of sound),” Putin said. “This is about three kilometers per second. The temperature of the striking elements reaches 4000 degrees. If my memory serves me right,” Putin noted, “the temperature on the surface of the Sun is 5,500-6000 degrees. Therefore, everything that is in the epicenter of the explosion is divided into fractions, into elementary particles, everything turns essentially into dust.”

In short, the Russian President declared the use of several Oreshnik missiles in one strike would be comparable in destructive power to a nuclear weapon.

The imagery presented in Annie Jacobson’s book is so utterly horrific as to surpass the ability of most humans to comprehend, let alone apply real-life examples that allow for a modicum of intellectual comprehension. As such, when Vladimir Putin made his analogous claim regarding the comparative destructive power of a hydrogen bomb and the Oreshnik missiles conventional warhead, one’s brain is deflected away from the unthinkable and toward the practical.

The Oreshnik missile attack against the Yuzmash factory outside Dnipropetrovsk produced stunning visual images of six separate impact “events,” each comprised of six luminescent “rods” impacting the factory grounds. The Russian government had alluded to the destruction caused by this attack as being devastating; the Ukrainians, on the other hand, have minimized the damage done as negligible.

In theory, the destructive potential of kinetic “rods” striking the earth at hypersonic speeds is enormous. A 2003 US Air Force study on what were called “Hypervelocity Rod Bundles (HRB)” speculated that 20-foot by six-foot rods of Tungsten, when dropped from a space-based platform and impacting the earth at a speed of ten times the speed of sound, would produce results equivalent to a nuclear explosion.

In 2018, Chinese researchers from the North University of China located in the city of Taiyuan, Shanxi province, working with the university’s Intelligent Weapon Research Institute, test-fired a tungsten rod from an unnamed high-altitude platform. In the test, a 140-kilogram tungsten rod was fired at a speed of over four kilometers per second and produced a crater with a depth of three meters and a width of over four and a half meters—far from the effect one would expect from a nuclear weapon. Moreover, the penetration effect of the tungsten rod was reduced at speeds over three and a half times the speed of sound.

The physics surrounding the effects of the Oreshnik payload remain confusing to even those who have spent a lifetime studying the physics of such weapons. Dr. Theodore Postol, a weapons expert from MIT, has done some preliminary studies on the Oreshnik which mirror the assessment of the researchers from the North University of China.

But Russian experts have spoken about advances made by Russia in material sciences associated with the performance of materials at hypersonic speed, advances which may alter the physics in question (for instance, the pure tungsten rod envisioned by the US Air Force and tested by the Chinese may, in the case of the Oreshnik, have had a coating of an advanced alloy formed from tantalum carbide and hafnium carbide, materials used by Russia in reentry operations from space, where heat absorption is desired).

The Russians point out that the Oreshnik “rods,” whatever their precise composition, would, once heated to 4,000 degrees Celsius (7,232 degrees Fahrenheit), would vaporize steel and concrete, including reinforced concrete, on contact. “It would vaporize,” as President Putin observed, “everything that is in the epicenter of the explosion is divided into fractions, into elementary particles, everything turns essentially into dust.”

The underlying question remains, how much of an area does the “epicenter of the explosion” encompass? Ukraine has been surprisingly reticent about documenting its claims that the Oreshnik caused “minimal damage,” only noting that the warheads which struck Dnipropetrovsk carried no explosives and, as a result, did not cause significant damage. This conclusion was shared by German experts commenting in Bild Magazine. Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, in a recent interview with Reuters, commented on the Oreshnik, noting that, “This is a new capability, but this is not a new capability that represents a dramatic change in the way that conventional weapons are developed.” He continued, “It’s a series of old technologies that have been put together in a new way.”

Lewis added that using the Oreshnik with conventional warheads was an expensive means “to deliver not that much destruction,” noting that, given the expense associated with ballistic missiles of the Oreshnik class, using this type of weapon to hit Ukraine was more likely designed to achieve a psychological effect than military impact. “If it were inherently terrifying, [Putin] would just use it. But that’s not quite enough,” Lewis said. “He had to use it and then do a press conference and then do another press conference and say: ‘Hey, this thing is really scary, you should be scared.’”

While Lewis’ analysis is open to scrutiny (his claim that the Oreshnik was simply a bunch of “old technologies” that have been “put together in new ways” is refuted by Russian statements and the evidence—his analysis of the reentry system is sophomoric, and does not take into account Russian reports which suggest the Oreshnik made use of new independent post-boost vehicles, or IPBVs, known in Russian as blok individualnogo razvedeniya (or BIR). Likewise, Lewis’ critique seems to simply parrot Ukrainian battle damage assessments without any attempt to delve further into the new technologies associated with the kinetic rods used by the Oreshnik.

(It should be noted that Theodore Postol, in conducting his analysis, has incorporated these new technologies in his work.)

Therein lies the rub—while President Putin undoubtedly employed the Oreshnik as a warning to Ukraine and its western allies about the consequences of striking Russian soil with US- and UK-manufactured and directed weapons such as the ATACMS and Storm Shadow, the deterrence value of the Oreshnik depends entirely upon its ability to inflict damage of such magnitude that Ukraine and its allies, when doing a risk-benefit analysis of the consequences of continuing to strike Russia with ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles, would opt to avoid escalation.

Assessments like those produced by Bild and Reuters, when backed by the statements made by Ukrainian officials, lend credence to the notion that the Oreshnik was all bark, with little or no bite. This mindset has resulted in Ukraine, with the blessing and assistance of its US and UK masters, continuing to strike targets in the Kursk region using ATACMS missiles.

This in turn has resulted in Russian President Putin warning that Russia may hit Ukraine again with one or more Oreshnik missiles. Putin indicated that the targets could include military, industrial, and national decision-making centers, including Bankova Street in Kiev, where the seat of the Ukrainian government is located.

It is in Russia’s interest to make the results of such an attack visible to a global audience and, by doing so, negate the analysis of western experts such as Jeffrey Lewis. If the Oreshnik, fired singly or as a multi-missile salvo, can impart on Ukrainian and western leaders the futility of continuing their missile strikes into Russia, then such an escalation would be of value.

If, however, the Oreshnik’s impact is hidden or—worse, for Russia—supports Jeffrey Lewis’ less than flattering assessment, then the deterrence value of the Oreshnik will be negligible, encouraging Ukraine to increase the scope and scale of its missile attacks on Russia, and putting Russia in a position where it must, given the political capital already invested in trying to deter Ukrainian missile attacks, escalate its response. This could include using new conventional weapons possessing massive destructive capability, such as the “father of all bombs” thermobaric weapon or the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle.

But escalation begets escalation, and if Russia is not able to deter Ukraine and its western allies from attacking its soil using ATACMS and Storm Shadow (and, perhaps in the coming days, the French-provided SCALP missile), then at some point the question of nuclear weapons becomes part of the escalation equation.

The bad news for Russia is that the US intelligence community has conducted several assessments over the course of the past several months which conclude that Russia would not use nuclear weapons in response to Ukraine’s use of ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles to attack Russia. This conclusion has been embraced by the White House and Congress, which explains the almost non-existent pushback from within US political circles to the decision to allow Ukraine to strike Russia.

The US intelligence assessment hinges around the notion that Russia will instead seek to match the ATACMS/Storm Shadow escalation with escalations of its own—of which the use of Oreshnik was the first.

As things stand, Russia appears to have two, perhaps three, rounds of conventional escalation left in terms of its retaliation for continued attacks. These could be exhausted by mid-December, which means the possibility—indeed probability, given the apparent mindset in Kiev, Brussels, and Washington, DC—of a nuclear exchange preempting Christmas is quite real.

The inability and/or unwillingness of Ukraine’s western masters to understand the consequences of deterrence failure makes nuclear war seem inevitable. The collective ignorance of the US and European leaders in this regard reminds one of the mindset of Guy Montag, the “fireman” in Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451:

“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.”

Life, however, isn’t a novel. And when the modern-day incarnations of Guy Montag decide to “flick the igniter,” all life as we know it will “blow away on a wind turned dark with burning.”

There will be a “No Nuclear War” event held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on December 7, where the danger of nuclear war and the options available to prevent it will be discussed by leading experts such as Larry Wilkerson, Theodore Postol, Melvin Goodman, Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampil, Margaret Kimberly, Garland Nixon, Dan Kovalik, Wilmer Leon and others, including the author of this article.

The National Press Club venue can accommodate 400 attendees. For those who cannot attend in person, the event will be streamed live. Go to NoNuclearWar.com for details. #NoNuclearWar

The Oreshnik was not any common ballistic missile.  It mounted a hypersonic glide vehicle with MIRV/MARV capability.  MIRV means Multiple Independently Targeted Reentry Vehicles.  MARV means Maneuverable Reentry Vehicle (sometimes denoted as MaRV). In the case of the Oreshnik (probably a version of another hypersonic platform called KEDR or Cedar), reports say that the glide vehicle released six warhead packages and each package released six submunitions.  This means that 24 weapons hit the Dnipro facility.

The Oreshnik was allegedly put together from existing missiles including YARS and Bulava, the latter a submarine launched ballistic missile.  However the key part was a modified Avangard Glide Vehicle that is released from the missile and flies at hypersonic speed to its target.  The Russians say the Avangard speed is around Mach 20 or around 24,501.6 km/h (15,224.6 mp/h).  The speed of the submunitions as they slam into their target is somewhat less, but probably just under Mach 10.

There is much speculation about the damage done at the Dnipro Yuzhmash aerospace manufacturing facility.  However, enough is known to make it clear that this strike on the Dnipro facility had unique characteristics.  Eyewitnesses who live in the area near the factory say that there was no fire when the attack struck, yet they felt something like an “earthquake” that “cracked” some houses perhaps a mile away.  Likewise there was no explosion in the conventional sense.  What was it?

The Yuzhmash workshops that are functioning (much of the complex is no longer operational) are underground. The challenge for the Oreshnik payload was whether it could knock out the underground operations.  While we have no accounting as to how much was actually destroyed, again witness accounts say the working part of the facility was turned into dust.  This suggests that the Oreshnik submunitions crashed at hypersonic speed into the workshops and simply pulverized them.  There was no particular need for high explosives to do the job.

This has significant implications for underground targets elsewhere, as surely the Ukrainians grasped immediately.  In effect, the Russians have put a Damoclean Sword on Zelensky’s head, as he operates from an underground bunker.  This suggests that the Yuzhmash target was well chosen to send a warning to Ukraine’s leaders.

It also sent a warning to NATO.  As Russian President Putin said in a nation-wide address, Oreshnik could hit any target in Europe.  Thus all NATO bases, command centers, and missile sites could be destroyed by Oreshnik.

Likewise the US got a wake up call insofar as America’s missile bases and air defenses are concerned.

Much of the land part of the US nuclear triad is silo based.  Over the years it was believed that it would take a highly accurate nuclear missile to create enough overpressure to destroy ICBMs such as the Minuteman hidden deep in silos.  The Russians, too, did the same, although unlike the US the Russians also built some road-mobile ICBMs that could be launched from road-mobile TELS or even from railway carriages.

The other “demonstration” from the Russian strike was accuracy.  Accuracy of ICBMs (and other weapons) is typically defined in Circular Error of Probability (CEP), which is the radius of a circle centered at the aimpoint, which has a 50% probability of hit.  Usually this is defined in meters or feet from the aimpoint.  Classically, long range missiles use sophisticated inertial navigation systems (INS) using gas-bearing driven gyroscopes.  For the most part, an ICBM with a nuclear warhead that can strike within 150 feet of its target was good enough.

That sort of ICBM CEP in a nuclear strike weapon is a poor weapon if fired at a target using a conventional warhead.  It seems Avangard is far more accurate than a “typical” ICBM in that it has a precision guidance system.  We don’t know how the Russians are achieving such accuracy. It may be that they are using some kind of imaging to locate the target and guide the payloads, perhaps similar to what the US uses to guide the Tomahawk cruise missile (a combination today of a system called TERCOM and GPS).  The differences also are obvious, in that Tomahawk was designed to be a nap of the earth cruise missile that used internal mapping while the Avangard problem relies on waypoints for general aim and an image of the target for positive identification.  (We have already seen something like this in Iranian cruise missiles and drones that could not be jammed because they did not require external guidance support, such as GPS.)

According to the Ukrainians who have recovered some (few) missile parts from the Dnipro strike, the Oreshnik/Avangard had telemetry onboard.  Telemetry is typically used in test vehicles to assess performance. It would appear, therefore, that the Russians probably have a handful of Oreshnik vehicles on hand and President Putin has announced the missile and glide vehicle combo will now enter serial production.

Air Defenses

Current generation air defenses have little chance to hit a hypersonic glide vehicle, even with advanced warning from US overhead satellites that can detect launches. Systems like Patriot are simply outclassed because Patriot radars probably cannot track a hypersonic glide vehicle.  In addition, the onboard radar on interceptor missiles may be too slow to track a hypersonic vehicle, although that isn’t certain. 

Heavier air defenses systems such as the US Ground Based Interceptor may have a better chance to shoot down a hypersonic glide vehicle before it releases its six lethal packages.  After that, it probably would be overwhelmed.  The AEGIS and AEGIS Ashore system that fires that SM-3 Block 1A/B interceptor missile may have a better chance because its ship or shore based radar might be able to pick up a hypersonic glide vehicle in space.  However, the AEGIS system (like GBI and Israel’s Arrow-3) used hit to kill technology, which may not be adequate to actually hit a hypersonic glide vehicle that is maneuverable.  

Clearly more work needs to be done to be able to actually field sensors that can follow a hypersonic glide vehicle and destroy it.  An alternative approach, that goes back to the now mostly defunct SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) program would have tried to kill rockets immediately after launch using space based interceptors of different kinds.  One space based interceptor system that was proposed, but never implemented, was called Brilliant Pebbles.

At the present time there is no US program to field any space-based missile defense system, and even if one was funded, fielding such a system would take decades.

Conclusions

The Russians have come up with a strike weapon that uses kinetics to destroy highly protected installations, underground as well as above ground.  At the present time there is no effective counter to the Oreshnik or other systems like it that use hypersonic glide vehicles.  The one practical limitation is such weapons are very costly and will appear only in relatively small numbers.  

Other countries, including the United States, are developing hypersonic glide vehicles, although some projects, such as the AGM-183 (launched from aircraft) has been cancelled after it failed a number of tests. China has already deployed the DF-ZF missile and hypersonic glide vehicle which is designed to hit US carriers and their task forces at sea.  Longer range versions of the DF-ZF are expected in future.

Meanwhile, insofar as the Ukraine war is concerned and the disposition of NATO forces, the appearance of the Oreshnik shows that the Russians have found a way to warn the United States (and the British and French too) that using long range weapons against Russian territory is not a good idea.

This shocking statement from LaPlante jibes with the response we have seen from the U.S./NATO defense industrial base to the Russian invasion of Ukraine — a response which has been underwhelming to say the least.

Indeed, Russia is outproducing all of NATO and the U.S in terms of ammunition, rockets, and tanks, despite having a 2023 defense budget of just $100 billion and a GDP of $2 trillion. Compare this to the combined US/NATO defense budget of $1.47 trillion and a combined GDP of about $45 trillion.

How can this be?

In short, the United States and NATO allies are prosecuting a war they would like to win, while Russia is prosecuting a war it believes that it has to win — an existential war. Consequently, for the Pentagon and American defense contractors it is largely business as usual with profits and revenues being the primary concern. Sure, some contracts were/are being expedited so that the money can begin to flow more quickly. However, with no real defense reform there is no reason to believe that defense contractors won’t continue their long run of delivering weapon systems like the F-35, the Ford Class Carrier, and the Sentinel ICBM behind schedule and for billions more than originally promised.

But it’s not just the big complex programs that come in late and over budget. Even something as relatively simple as producing unguided artillery shells come in late and over budget.

Going into 2022 there was little doubt that the U.S. Army no longer believed artillery to be as central to the battlefield as it once was. Demonstrating this mindset, on May 21, 2021, just about eight months before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Army requested permission to cut back annual spending on its 155mm rounds by half, reducing annual production to 75,357 rounds per year, about 6,200 per month.

But the story doesn’t end there. It turns out that the Army had presided over the decline of the entire U.S. artillery ammunition supply chain. Just how severe the decline is revealed in an excellent investigative piece by Reuters in which we learn that for years, U.S. production of 155mm rounds had been crippled by manufacturing defects and safety issues.

Furthermore, plans to replace the antiquated U.S. artillery production facility in Virginia with a modern, much higher capacity facility had fallen a decade behind schedule while nearly doubling its cost. In other words, very late and way over budget.

However, the most disturbing aspect of just how poorly the U.S. Army and Congress maintained our artillery shell supply chain was revealed by an internal U.S. Army document from 2021 detailing “foreign dependencies” on at least a dozen chemicals critical to manufacturing artillery shells that sourced from China and India, countries with close trade ties to Russia, according to the Reuters investigation.

All of the above adds up to an artillery ammunition supply chain in very bad shape, especially when compared to the 438,000 rounds per month U.S. ammunition plants could produce in 1980. To restore the supply chain, the U.S. Army requested $3.1 billion to ramp up 155mm shell production to 100,000 shells per month by the end of 2025. But Congress generously doubled that amount to $6.414 billion as part of the $95 billion supplemental security bill signed by Biden on April 24.

The Army’s plan to build production up to 100,000 rounds per month, 1.2 million annually, by the end of 2025 sounds pretty good. But we have yet to see that production rate in reality, and by the end of 2025 Ukraine could have lost the war.

Still, it is good to remember that the United States is not the only power engaged in this proxy war against Russia — other countries are also working to get desperately needed artillery shells to Ukraine. And the biggest ammunition news coming out of Europe is that defense giant Rheinmetall, courtesy of an €8.5billion contract with the German military, is going to produce up to 700,000 artillery shells and 10,000 tons of powder annually, starting in 2025.

Hence, if everything goes according to plan, by the end of 2025 the U.S. and its NATO allies could be producing nearly 2 million 155mm rounds per year. This seems less impressive when you consider that from the start of the war to today Russia has already increased its overall annual artillery shell production to three million rounds.

This includes increasing its production of 152mm shells five-fold, going from 400,000 rounds per year in January of 2022 to two million rounds per year. Additionally, Russia has reportedly been able to ramp up the production of its 152mm Krasnopol-M2 artillery precision guided rounds by a factor of 20, according to Russian state sources.

These shells are more resistant to jamming than the $100,000 M982 Excalibur 155 mm precision guided rounds that the U.S. had been providing to Ukraine that have largely been rendered ineffective by Russian jamming.

Yet, it is not enough to provide artillery shells, you also need the artillery to fire the shells, and Ukraine’s artillery is not only wearing down, but it is also being destroyed by Russia. And long before artillery tubes (barrels) fail completely due to wear and tear, they begin to lose range and become less accurate. Both Ukraine and Russia have to deal with the wear issue, so the question is who has the heavy industry to build artillery tubes.

Though there’s not a lot of information available on artillery tube/barrel production rates, Russia is outstripping the U.S. and NATO weapons production by running its very large Soviet era factories 24/7 to produce ammunition, vehicles and other military. This suggests that it is also likely doing the same when it comes to artillery tube production, as well as producing brand new artillery.

On the other hand, there is little doubt that if the United States and its NATO allies truly believed their existence was threatened, they could spend billions putting emergency measures in place that would allow them to outproduce Russia, whose defense spending and GDP is a fraction of the combined NATO/U.S.

But such measures would also require disrupting the defense procurement status quo. So, in theory it could be done. But the U.S. and its NATO allies don’t seem to be rushing to establish sweeping new industrial policies. Maybe it is because they know Putin is not going to execute an unprovoked Article 5 attack on a NATO country and that democracy will survive regardless of the outcome in Ukraine.

Consequently, while the Russian threat is great for justifying lavishing billions of dollars on defense contractors to replenish depleted weapon and ammunition stocks, as well as acquiring new weapons, it is not so great a threat as to justify disrupting the status quo defense contractors have created – a status quo that delivers less bang for the buck each year while generating record profits and revenues.

In sharp contrast, Russia’s military buildup will continue to be that of a country that believes it is fighting an existential war of survival.

Mike Fredenburg has been writing on defense policy and politics for over 30 years, with articles in numerous publications including The California Political Review, The San Diego Union Tribune, and National Review.

The absence of talks between the two sides on reducing nuclear risks and potential arms-control steps comes during the worst downturn in U.S.-Russia relations since the end of the Cold War and has raised fears of a new arms race.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a speech in June that the U.S. was prepared to begin the talks without preconditions. And the Biden administration followed up with a confidential paper a few months later proposing such talks and outlining ideas on how to manage nuclear risks.

But Moscow responded with its own diplomatic paper in late December, saying that it wasn’t interested in resuming arms-control talks, complaining that the U.S. was seeking the strategic defeat of Russia through its support of Ukraine, U.S. officials say.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasized Russia’s position on Thursday, telling a press conference in Moscow that the U.S. needed to revise its policy toward Russia before a dialogue on nuclear arms control could be held.

The New Start treaty, which limits long-range U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons, is due to expire in February 2026 and other arms-control agreements have collapsed.

One purpose of the arms-control dialogue the U.S. had been hoping to begin with Moscow was to start “a conversation on what a framework after New Start could look like” and reduce nuclear dangers while tensions are high over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a senior administration official said last year.

Pentagon and other Biden administration national security officials are considering what steps the U.S. might take if the arms-control process grinds to a halt and the expansion of China’s nuclear forces adds to the threat facing the U.S.

A congressionally mandated commission on the U.S. Strategic Posture said in October that the U.S. needed to prepare to expand its nuclear forces in the years ahead to deter the twin threat from Russia and China.

U.S. arms-control proponents criticized Moscow’s stance, saying that it risked fueling a new arms race.

“Russia’s rejection of the U.S. offer for discussions of nuclear risk reduction and arms control is a violation of Moscow’s obligation under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to engage in negotiations on disarmament and bring an end to the arms race,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a private group that supports arms-control agreements. 

In February, Russia said that it was suspending its participation in the New Start treaty. Despite that, Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said that Moscow plans to observe the limits on the number of strategic warheads that can be deployed under the accord until it expires to maintain “stability in the nuclear missile area.”

While Lavrov didn’t reject the possibility of arms-control talks if the Biden administration’s policies toward Moscow changed, he said that ideas sketched out in the U.S.’s confidential paper didn’t address Russia’s concerns.

“They want the nonnuclear component of military confrontation, conventional forces, to be taken out of the equation,” Lavrov said. “The goal is obviously to consolidate the serious quantitative advantage that the collective West has in this area.”

Pranay Vaddi, a senior arms-control official on President Biden’s National Security Council, said Russia’s response didn’t address in any detail the concrete ideas in the U.S. proposal on how to reduce nuclear risks.

“We didn’t get any sort of substantive feedback on the things that we wanted to talk about,” Vaddi told a meeting hosted Thursday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

Those U.S. ideas included the sort of arms-control framework that might be put in place after the New Start treaty expires and ways to address Washington’s allegations that Russia has violated that accord, as well as other risk-reduction measures.

Instead, Vaddi said, Russia’s response had sought to broaden any consideration of arms-control issues to include Russia’s objections to the possibility of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s further expansion and U.S. support for Ukraine.

“They have linked other politics to arms control in a way that has not been done in the post-Cold War era,” Vaddi said. “As a result, we don’t have a conversation to be had.”

The poor performance of the Russian military in the early days of the war shocked many in the West and ultimately allowed Ukraine to resist, and then roll back, a large part of the Russian advance.

But Russia has since learned from its mistakes, adapting in ways that could make it difficult for Ukraine to expel Russian forces from its territory.

After Ukraine easily swept through Russia’s lines in the Kharkiv region last autumn, Moscow spent months preparing formidable defenses ahead of the current Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south. Moscow is also deploying drones to scope out and attack Ukrainian positions in a way that Kyiv has struggled to respond to.

As a result, Ukrainian forces have advanced slowly in the past few months, facing dense minefields while Russian helicopters, antitank missiles and artillery pick them off.

“We have seen quite a few areas where they’re adapting, and of course we’re paying close attention to that,” Gen. James Hecker, the top U.S. Air Force commander in Europe, said in an interview.

To be sure, Russia’s military—which has suffered more than 270,000 killed and wounded as its army has lost more than 50% of its “combat effectiveness,” according to some Western estimates—may need to make deeper changes to sustain a yearslong war.

It still suffers from a Soviet-style top-down structure that allows little initiative for front-line commanders and gives priority to political goals from Moscow over battlefield decision-making. It expended months and thousands of lives to take Bakhmut, an eastern Ukrainian city with little strategic value, after the Kremlin identified it as a key target. Russia has continued to deploy tens of thousands of soldiers to defend the city, where it claimed its only major victory since the early months of the war.

Moreover, Russia is now largely on the defensive as it tries to hold back the Ukrainian push, and it is far easier for armies to defend than to go on the offensive. Analysts and Western officials say Russia has exhausted its offensive capacity for now and is failing to gain new ground in parts of eastern Ukraine where it is still trying to push forward.

However, the Russian military is showing some capacity to learn from early mistakes.

For instance, early in the war, Russian warplanes flew into the teeth of the Ukrainian air defenses and suffered serious losses because Moscow had failed to gain air superiority. More than 75 planes were shot down, with many flying “right into the surface-to-air missile engagement zones of the Ukrainians,” said Hecker.

He added, however, that much of the Russian air force now remains intact. “So they now don’t fly in those rings or if they do, it is for low altitude for very quick moments and then they go back out,” he said, although that tactic has seriously hampered the accuracy of the Russian bombing missions and that air superiority remains well beyond the Russians’ reach.

The Russians have added guidance capabilities to older bombs that they release from planes flying beyond the range of Ukraine’s air defense, including from aircraft flying over Russian territory. Ukraine struggles to detect and shoot them down with their Soviet-era aircraft.

Russia has also moved command posts and many ammunition depots farther from the front lines after Ukraine struck them using Western-provided Himars launchers, which fire guided rockets with a range of almost 50 miles.

After the Ukrainians began to use extended-range JDAM satellite-guided bombs, the Russians moved their command posts farther back still. Those strikes have forced the Russians to conserve the use of artillery, extend their already strained supply lines and become more precise in their targeting.

The U.S. now says it will provide a small number of ATACMS missiles to Ukraine in coming weeks and that more might be provided later. Those surface-to-surface missiles have a range between 100 and 190 miles depending on the model that is provided, and could similarly target Russian logistical lines.

Early in the war, Moscow deployed unprotected columns of Russian armor into Ukraine, expecting minimal resistance from Kyiv, and sent undermanned and underequipped units into combat, resulting in tens of thousands of Russian deaths.

The Russians are now better at protecting their soldiers by building deep, highly fortified trenches. They hide their tanks and armored personnel carriers in tree lines and under camouflage netting, conducting sorties to fire on Ukrainian positions before swiftly retreating.

 “If we compare this with the start of the invasion, the difference is colossal,” says Oleksandr Solonko, a private in a Ukrainian air-reconnaissance battalion near Robotyne, close to Russia’s main defensive lines in the south. “They’ve sprayed the fields with mines and put up all sorts of traps. They’ve done it well.”

In the south, the Russians have increased the use of drones and guided bombs to hold back the Ukrainian offensive. Lancet explosive drones and racing drones rigged with explosives smash into Ukrainian armored vehicles, medical-evacuation vans and infantry, disabling vehicles and killing and maiming troops.

Yuriy Bereza, commander of the Dnipro-1 Regiment that has been fighting around Kreminna in the east, said he has seen a marked increase in the Russians’ use of drones, a bid to catch up with Ukraine’s own. Previously he spotted the occasional Russian Orlan drone fly over one of his regiment’s positions to send back coordinates for Russian artillery units. Now whole swarms are active overhead.

”When we started fighting them a year and a half ago, they were throwing people at everything, and losing thousands,” said Bereza. “Now they’re trying to catch up to us technologically. And they’re learning fast.”

Ukrainian troops on the front lines around Bakhmut say they lose dozens of drones daily because Russian jamming equipment is successfully bringing them down on enemy territory.

Ukrainian officials say the Russians have procured thousands of cheap drones produced on the Chinese market by the manufacturer DJI. Russia has also expedited the production of Geran-3 drones in cooperation with Iran, menacing Ukrainian cities in a bid to undermine morale as it pounds Ukrainian forces on the front lines.

Ukraine’s drone industry has expanded dramatically in recent months, but the losses are nonetheless substantial. In a recent report by the Royal United Services Institute, the London-based think tank estimated that Ukraine is losing around 10,000 drones a month, largely because of Russian electronic warfare.

The Russian military has in turn been adapting to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian territory. After the Ukrainians began using drones to strike Russian combat aircraft deep inside Russia, the Russians started dispersing their planes to more airfields. They also began putting tires on the wings and fuselage of bombers at some of their bases.

The practice, the utility of which isn’t entirely clear to some Western experts, had been documented in commercial satellite photos by Maxar Technologies that show tires piled on Tu-95 bombers at the Engels air base near Saratov, southwestern Russia.

“Placing tires, crates and other material on top of the wings and fuselage could be an attempt to confuse or alter the visual patterns used by drones targeting the aircraft,” said Stephen Wood, senior director at Maxar.

Hecker, the U.S. Air Force commander, said the move might be a Russian effort to protect the planes from a drone blast. “That’s their sandbags,” he noted at a conference hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association. “Something hits the aircraft. Instead of putting a dent in the aircraft, which might make it unflyable for a short amount of time, it hits a tire.”

Russia’s war machine is adapting at home as well, managing to sustain and even increase defense production of some items despite sanctions.

Western officials thought Russia could produce about 100 tanks a year, but the actual tank production is closer to 200 a year now, according to a Western defense official. However, the official said Russia had lost more than 2,000 tanks, which he said would take it a decade to make up.

The West thought Russia might be able to produce about one million artillery shells a year, the Western defense official said. But now it believes Russia is on a path over the next couple of years to produce two million artillery shells annually. To put that in perspective, he said, Russia fired 10 to 11 million shells last year and was sometimes using shells that were out of date and prone to malfunction.

To sustain the war, he said, Russia has boosted military spending, though this has had a distorting effect on its economy by forcing economic cutbacks elsewhere, prompting an increase in interest rates.

The West has sent some high-profile sophisticated precision missiles that are better than anything Russia has, which have caught the headlines, but the reality of the war in Ukraine is that is it little more than a war of attrition, an artillery duel of dumb shells and drones strikes. As bne IntelliNews reported, Ukraine is running out of ammunition and running low on artillery shells, armoured vehicles and other weaponry at a time that Russia is aggressively expanding its own military production.

Kyiv’s existing stores of Russian-made equipment are becoming depleted, as are the West’s own stockpiles, raising the risk of shortages by the end of the year.

The Ukrainian army was blasting through 180,000 artillery shell rounds per month, whereas before the war the US was producing only 14,500 shells per month, and EU about the same amount. Since the war started the US is now producing 20,000 rounds a month and has invested into new capacity that could increase that output to 90,000 rounds per month “eventually,” the Washington Post reports. 

“Ukraine will soon completely stop using its own equipment, as nothing will remain. All that they are fighting with and all that they are using – all this is brought in from abroad,” Russian President Vladimir Putin scoffed at the recent investment conference in St Petersburg. “You can’t fight like this for long.”

Nato spokesperson Oana Lungescu said the alliance was “continuing to work to rapidly address shortfalls in ammunition stockpiles, enhance interoperability and interchangeability and strengthen the transatlantic industrial base.” But little has been achieved. 

Lungescu claims that Nato allies like the US, UK, Norway and France have already signed large contracts, but declined to provide additional details when pressed by the Washington Post this week. 

Nato countries have still not scaled up their spending to just bring them to the recommended 2% of GDP all members are supposed to spend on defence, and remain very reluctant to commit to billions of dollars of long-term contracts so the privately owned defence sector can invest into new facilities.

The lack of crucial materiel comes as Kyiv launches the long-anticipated counter-offensive, after which it may be vulnerable to Russia’s own riposte.

Yet despite the dire situation on the battlefield, European governments continue to dither over doing the long-term deals that would allow the defence sector to tool up and produce the badly needed weapons and munitions for a number of reasons.

The European defence industry is facing numerous challenges after decades of underinvestment, mismangement and bureaucratic red tape have left it unable to meet the escalating demands of increased production. Moreover, competition from non-European countries has added extra pressure on the EU’s defence sector that is undermining the effort to supply Ukraine. 

Nato underspend

Nato members are supposed to allocate at least 2% of GDP to their defence budgets but only 10 of the 30 members have actually done so; the aggregate spending currently accounts for 1.8% of their combined GDP.

Poland was already spending slightly more than 2% before the war started but has seen spending soar to just under 4%, as in addition to helping Ukraine, it now intends to build the most powerful conventional army in Europe that can permanently face down the Russian threat.

The US has actually decreased the amount it spends on defence between 2021 and 2023 slightly to 3.4%, but as its economy is so large its nominal spend of over $800bn dwarfs that of the UK and Germany, the second biggest spenders in nominal terms, that both spend just under €50bn a year each. However, many of the other countries that have made big increases in percentage terms are small economies like the Baltic States and contribute little to the nominal spend. The US is still carrying the can for Europe’s security.

Russian military spending grew by an estimated 9.2% in 2022 and now makes up an estimated quarter of all budget spending (large parts of Russia’s expenditure is now classified), to around $86.4bn – still only a tenth of what the US spends a year. But that was still equivalent to 4.1% of Russia’s GDP in 2022, up from 3.7% of GDP in 2021.

And unlike the West, Putin has put his economy onto a war footing. Military factories are running three shifts a day and working 24/7, while civilian facilities have been converted to boost production further, according to remarks made by President Putin at the recent St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). Defence production has tripled in the last year, giving the economy a war boost that could see it start to overheat, warned CBR Governor Elvia Nabiullina at the same event. Russia’s federal budget report showed Moscow spent RUB2 trillion ($26bn) on defence in January and February alone, a 282% increase on the same period in 2021, Reuters reported. 

That is going to make a difference on the battlefield. Russia made 1.7mn 155mm artillery shells a year – the vital workhorse ammo in the current conflict – before the war, but that will rise to 2.4mn by the end of this year, the New York Times recently reported. Germany’s biggest arms maker is struggling to increase its production to 450,000 rounds and Ukraine has already largely used up the stock of 1mn shells the US gifted it at the outbreak of hostilities.

In 2022, European countries did increase their defence spending by 13% to a total of $345bn, but the commitment to step up defence expenditure has yet to translate into signed contracts for weapons and ammunition.

No contracts

The West massively outspends Russia on arming itself, but the production of those weapons is all almost entirely produced by privately owned companies. These businesses are reluctant to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into new facilities unless they get cast iron long-term contracts. On the other side of the table, governments are unwilling to commit to long-term contracts for millions of rounds of ammo and hundreds of tanks they won’t need if the Ukraine war comes to an end soon. Indeed, the West’s reluctance to sign the necessary contracts strongly suggests that Western governments intend to push for a ceasefire sooner than later.

While a few contracts have been awarded, the pace does not align with the industry’s expectations. Building new factories is further constrained by limited access to scarce resources and skilled labour. The smaller defence industry has to compete for materials with the much larger car and electronic sectors. Finding and hiring enough skilled labour to man a new weapons factory is another costly bottleneck.

The problem of supply is made even more complicated as Russia remains a major supplier of many of the raw materials needed, such as aluminium and titanium. France’s aerospace industry has already started to stockpile titanium and is hunting for new supplies.

“There is no sense of urgency,” Jan Pie, secretary-general of the Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Association of Europe, told Politico, and urgent reforms to the defence bureaucracy are still lacking. “We are in a peacetime mood with all these processes,” he said.

These business problems have been exacerbated by the chaos that reigns in Europe’s biggest arms producer Germany. As the third-biggest provider of military aid to Ukraine in nominal terms, its defence sector has fallen into disarray following over a decade of botched reforms that have left its procurement sector dysfunctional, Der Spiegel reported recently.

The new Defence Minister, Boris Pistorius, was appointed at the start of this year to tackle the problem, but progress has been slow. For example, of the 400-odd Leopard 2 tanks German has, only about a third of them are combat ready.

In the meantime, the Bundestag voted through an emergency €100bn for military spending, on top of the €47bn already in the budget, but this money too is being disbursed slowly thanks to the bureaucratic snafus.

Private sector scaling up

Until Western governments finally commit to new long-term contracts, the private companies have been doing what they can to boost production at their existing facilities and several have even started to invest some of their own money into expansion while they wait.

Companies like Sweden’s Saab, Norway’s Nammo and France’s Nexter, as well as Germany’s tank-maker Rheinmetall and missile-maker MBDA, have invested their own funds to expand existing production. Saab, for instance, has already doubled its production and intends to double it again by early 2025. France has also doubled the production of certain items, including weaponry sent to Ukraine.

Germany’s Rheinmetall aims to increase annual output of artillery shells from 450,000 to 600,000 by expanding existing plants and integrating the takeover of Spanish company Expal Systems.

The European Union has pledged to deliver 1mn rounds of 155mm artillery ammunition to Ukraine in the next year, with all shells being manufactured within the bloc. In April, the European Commission introduced the Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP), a €500mn initiative aimed at boosting industrial production and replenishing member countries’ ammunition stocks. A Defence Production Action Plan is also expected to be approved at a Nato meeting in Vilnius later this month.

However, despite all the breathless reports of Europe “scrambling” to make more money available, little has changed on the ground. Large sums have been pledged but after 15 months of escalating warfare, not enough is actually being spent.

“We’re taking a bit of a risk,” Saab CEO Micael Johansson told Politico, noting his company is investing in infrastructure, personnel and raw materials. “Those are our own investments completely,” he added, “it’s so important that we get some sort of long-term contracts.”

Germany’s biggest weapons-maker Rheinmetall has been particularly proactive and is negotiating several billion-dollar contracts to manufacture ammunition for Ukraine. According to the company’s general director, Armin Papperger, a contract could be signed very soon to produce more ammo, with the first batches being sent to Ukraine in July.

“The government has ordered 300,000 rounds [of 155mm shells], and this year we will deliver up to 60,000,” Papperger added. “When it comes to tank ammunition, we have the largest production capacity in the world. There is no problem. The situation is different for artillery ammunition with a calibre of 155 millimetres. We can currently produce 450,000 rounds per year, but Ukraine alone needs up to a million rounds. With the Spanish manufacturer Expal, which we would like to take over in the course of the summer, we intend to expand our joint capacity to up to 600,000 rounds. Other manufacturers have to supply the rest.”

However, Papperger admitted in an interview with the German Editorial Network last week that little of the state’s €100bn of emergency money has been spent so far, and that to supply Ukraine with a million artillery rounds governments will have to dip into their own strategic reserves this year. But that should change as the year wears on.

“Not that many contracts were signed in 2022, you are right. This year, however, that will change. We are currently in the process of negotiating several very large orders: tanks, ammunition, soon anti-aircraft – and aircraft. This involves long terms and many billions of euros,” Papperger said.

Rheinmetall expects to receive more orders for vehicles, ammunition, electronics and radar systems worth billions of euros annually. And in a new direction, the company will start making fuselage parts for the American F-35 fighter plane which the German government has bought. Papperger also said that in the coming months, Nato will publish more accurate guidelines on how much industrial capacity needs to be increased “to ensure the security of Europe and Nato for the next ten years.”

Concerns are also rising that what contracts that are signed will go to non-EU companies, potentially undermining the investment case in Europe further. Countries like South Korea, Israel and Turkey are actively marketing their weapons to Ukraine and the European paymasters. French President Emmanuel Macron warned countries at the GLOBSEC conference in Bratislava in May that if they purchase non-European products that they may face future problems. Indeed, Macron has strongly advocated for beefing up Europe’s military to become less reliant on the US security umbrella.

South Korea has already emerged as a leading supplier after it entered into a joint venture with Poland to produce arms and ammo that will initially be used to supply Ukraine.

The US has traditionally supplied half of Europe’s military equipment needs and has made it clear that it expects to win a large share of the necessary procurement contracts. Brussels remains divided on the issue, but the US still leads in the most sophisticated systems like the F-35 jet fighter.

Trying to understand today’s problems through the lens of history and historical example is always fraught. Circumstances change with the times; today is not yesterday. Still, human beings are more or less the same. The biases, impulses, and hubris that influenced decision-making in 1962 are alive and well despite the species’ best efforts.

So what can the Cuban Missile Crisis tell us about today’s nuclear dangers? First, it reveals lessons that were obvious then and that have stood the passage of time. But it can also tell us something today that could not have been understood in the moment or even years later.

Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis

You don’t know what you don’t know, and those assumptions you’re making could lead to an extinction event.

When the Soviet Union decided to place nuclear weapons in Cuba, it did not anticipate that the United States would react so strongly (what specialists refer to as “freaking out”) or that the national security team would actually recommend a military strike and invasion of the country.

The Soviet leadership could tell itself that it was simply reacting to U.S. nuclear deployments in Italy and Turkey, and that like any other global power, it was reassuring an ally that had been subject to a failed military attack (the Bay of Pigs). And Washington surely knew that Moscow had no intention of initiating at nuclear attack. Right?

For their part, Kennedy’s advisers were recommending military action on the assumption that they could prevent Cuba from getting Soviet nuclear weapons. What they did not know was that the USSR had already transferred tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons to the island. Had the United States invaded, Soviet forces would have used them.

Washington was also unaware that Soviet submarines off the coast of Cuba were armed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes, and that the subs had instructions to use them if they came under attack. Oblivious to the risk, the American navy hunted Soviet submarines and with the hope of making them surface. In at least one instance, the Americans dropped practice depth charges to try to force the issue.

Both sides made risky assumptions about the situation, and how the enemy would perceive their actions and intentions. And both sides were wildly uninformed on some of the most basic and consequential facts.

Crises that seem worth the risk of Armageddon may make not make a lot of sense a little later.

One might rightly question what, exactly, is worth Armageddon? But the essence of nuclear deterrence is the willingness to put at risk all life on earth. That’s the bargain.

Nevertheless, the CMC reminds us that stakes that can seem — in the moment — worthy of global suicide, the ultimate hill to die on, may not look so compelling after the fact. In 1963, land-based missiles with their attendant vulnerabilities were still the platform of choice for maintaining nuclear deterrence. Very soon, however, the nuclear powered submarine, armed with nuclear weapons, would set the gold standard for deterrence. Would Soviet missiles in Cuba still matter given the invulnerability of Soviet (and U.S.) submarines? Sure, at least politically, and the deployment of land-based missiles was an issue again in the 1980s. But worthy of risking the destruction of the planet? Doubtful.

We almost fought a nuclear war over something that, in hindsight, was going to be rendered largely irrelevant by changing technology.

Diplomacy, not threats, saved the day.

It is a reflection of our times, that one has to state forthrightly something so obvious. But here we are. For more than a decade, America’s foreign policy has been obsessed with threats and coercion. Like an invasive species that strangles the other parts of the eco-system, sanctions and associated instruments of pressure dominate the day.

But threats and bravado did not prevent the missiles of October from being fired. Posturing did not cause the nuclear adversary to melt into capitulation. Nor was the use of military force the hero. No, it was plain, old, boring diplomacy. “If you will do this, I will do that, and we can both walk away safer.”

The generals don’t know much about nuclear war.

Kennedy’s national security team, and especially his military advisers, failed him and the American people at a moment of peril never seen before or since. And if there is a new nuclear crisis, once again the generals will surely get their say, on TV if nowhere else.

But the truth is the military has no better an understanding of the peculiar, upside-down world of nuclear weapons than anybody else. To begin with, no one in any military in the world today has fought or had any direct experience with nuclear war. Zero. Indeed, the U.S. military is fundamentally built around conventional war. Promotion comes from success on the conventional battlefield fighting conventional wars.

And in their defense, how could it otherwise be? As a nation, we expect to fight conventional wars, not nuclear wars, so of course, that will be the priority. Measured by prestige, money, or most any metric, nuclear weapons are a secondary concern inside the Pentagon. Add to that the fact that officials are rotated to a new job roughly every three years, and you have a system with little core knowledge about the most destructive weapons in human history. Those in charge are reading the talking points from their predecessors and waiting to move on to a more exciting or rewarding assignment.

No, the generals will not save you. They have no special knowledge or expertise when it comes the ultimate threat to national security. If anything, their conventional war bias inhibits their ability to understand the very different world of nuclear threats.

Lessons that are only now evident

The CMC marked the beginning of the most successful effort in human history to turn back nuclear dangers.

It was hard to see in 1962, in the moment. The Cuban Crisis took place in October and left both Kennedy and Khrushchev badly shaken. In June of the following year, Kennedy gave a speech at American University on nuclear weapons that called for a nuclear test ban and disarmament. The speech is considered by many to be the most important speech on national security given by a modern American president. A few months later, in October of 1963, the Limited Test Ban Treaty, the first nuclear arms control treaty in history, came into force.

A month later, Kennedy was dead. The man who had stood on the edge of global nuclear annihilation and pulled the world back was felled by a bullet.

What was not seen then and can only be seen today, is that the missile crisis, in combination with other factors in play at the time, led directly to the Test Ban Treaty. The Test Ban Treaty, in turn, marked the beginning of a number of successful efforts to turn back the nuclear danger. It was followed by the Outer Space Treaty (1967), Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (1970), Open Skies Treaty (1972), Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty (1972) and U.S.-Soviet arms control negotiations that produced the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and its successors.

Over the course of the next 25 years or so, the world dramatically cut the number of nuclear tests, the size of the world’s nuclear arsenals, and even the rate of nuclear proliferation. It was a stunning success that no one had predicted, and that few appreciated as it played out one diplomatic agreement at a time.

In 1962, people believed they had to act to prevent nuclear annihilation. Today people think that’s the government’s job.

As we go about our daily lives, there are ideas in our heads that we believe to be true, in part, because they seem reasonable, everyone else believes them, and frankly, because they aren’t a real focus of attention.

Today, for example, I suspect that most people think the nuclear danger is “proliferation.” Moreover, they believe that proliferation is a problem best left to governments to solve. “What can I do,” they might reasonably ask, “about North Korea or Iran?”

It is a curious view. Many of these same people would say they have little faith in governments, or worse, that they mistrust them. And yet they expect governments in general, and the governments that own nuclear weapons, in particular, to take care of the problem.

Still, the most striking aspect of this largely post-Cold War attitude is how differently some people viewed it in an earlier moment in history. Everyone understood in 1963 that the danger was not proliferation, the risk that some new country might get the bomb. No, the danger was nuclear weapons: all nuclear weapons, and especially American nuclear weapons. American nuclear weapons were on the table, because if there was going to be a planet-ending atomic war, U.S. weapons would be front and center, even as other countries could only watch from the sidelines.

And since all nuclear weapons were implicated, some citizens saw it as their responsibility to address the danger before it was too late. It was a belief implicit in much of the debate over nuclear weapons and nuclear war during the Cold War but was especially pronounced in the late 1950s and again in the 1980s, when the danger of nuclear weapons seemed especially “real.”

But then, just like that, the Soviet Union collapsed, the danger disappeared, or so we told ourselves, and the world put the problem of nuclear weapons in a box and moved on. Post-Cold War, the nuclear danger was reframed as “proliferation,” which conveniently excludes all the countries that already possess nuclear arsenals. The proliferation frame also neatly cut out the pesky citizen who had pressed slow-moving governments to act.

Our post-Cold War lack of attention has, in turn, been rewarded with retrenchment. We now see bigger nuclear arsenals, threats of use, and the collapse of agreements. The whole set of institutions built to protect us from nuclear war appears to be teetering.

Citizens and leaders in 1962 believed they could do something about the nuclear weapons danger, and they acted. Citizens in 2022 are blind to that success, have forsaken the power they once used to great effect, and have instead passed the problem to governments they believe to be incompetent and untrustworthy.

And so, the Cuban Missile Crisis should remind us that these ideas in our heads are not true, or in any case, do not have to be true. We can look the danger in the eye and address it as our forebearers did, or we can ignore it and eventually succumb to it, condemning all generations past and future.

And if the Cuban Missile Crisis is insufficient to the task of reminding us what is at stake, perhaps Mr. Putin is up to it.

So hope the fates, I think.