An interdisciplinary analysis of technical feasibility, strategic implications and bargaining dynamics in the context of New START, geopolitical competition for resources, and Russia’s search for political arrangements with Europe

Keywords: 9M730 Burevestnik · SSC-X-9 Skyfall · open-cycle nuclear propulsion · nuclear ramjet · Project Pluto · deterrence · New START · arms control · hypersonic weapons · exotic weapon systems · game theory · costly signalling · propaganda · public opinion · war in Ukraine · strategic stability · great-power competition · escalate-to-de-escalate doctrine

ABSTRACT

The 9M730 Burevestnik programme (NATO designation: SSC‑X‑9 Skyfall) represents a deliberate, state‑level effort by the Russian Federation to field a nuclear‑powered cruise missile with the declared aim of achieving extremely long‑range endurance and the ability to circumvent missile‑defence systems through non‑ballistic trajectories and prolonged low‑altitude flight. This study provides a rigorous, interdisciplinary analysis integrating six closely interrelated analytical dimensions: the technical feasibility of the open‑cycle nuclear propulsion concept; the radiological implications of both nominal operation and accident or interception scenarios; the specific doctrinal role of the system in contemporary Russian nuclear strategy; the consequences for the international arms‑control regime following the final expiry of the New START Treaty on 5 February 2026; the strategic use of the programme as an instrument of external signalling and domestic propaganda; and the geostrategic dynamics of competition for critical resources and Russia’s search for political arrangements with Europe that recognise its security interests.

The analysis draws on the specialised technical literature, including historical data from the United States Project Pluto (1957–1964) developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, peer‑reviewed studies in nuclear engineering and aerospace engineering, technical reports from leading strategic‑studies institutions (RAND Corporation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Chatham House, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Arms Control Association, Federation of American Scientists), detailed forensic reconstructions of the August 2019 Nyonoksa radiological accident that killed five senior Rosatom specialists and led to the detection of specific radionuclides (ruthenium‑103, strontium‑91, barium‑140, caesium‑137) by European monitoring stations within the CTBTO network, and verified journalistic sources on the test of 21 October 2025.

A key contribution of this study is to demonstrate that the strategic value of Burevestnik for contemporary Russian statecraft does not primarily depend on its actual operational reliability – which remains highly uncertain in view of the technical challenges and the publicly documented record of test failures – but rather on the interaction of three dimensions: partial technical capability demonstrated under controlled test conditions; costly signalling of resolve within a bargaining framework, as theorised by Schelling (1960), Fearon (1997) and Kydd (2005); and systematic exploitation of the programme in external and internal communication. A historical comparison with U.S. precedents – notably the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the deployment of Pershing II missiles and the MX Peacekeeper programme – situates Burevestnik within a broader pattern of using technically ambitious weapon programmes as bargaining chips in arms‑control negotiations, regardless of their immediate military utility.

 1. INTRODUCTION: BUREVESTNIK AT THE CROSSROADS OF TECHNOLOGY, STRATEGY AND POLITICS

1.1 Historical and political context of the March 2018 announcement

Burevestnik was first presented publicly on 1 March 2018 in President Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Federal Assembly, delivered at the Manezh exhibition hall in Moscow. This constitutionally significant event sets Russia’s legislative, budgetary and foreign‑policy priorities for the year. In that speech, Putin unveiled a family of six new strategic weapon systems, among them a nuclear‑powered cruise missile he claimed would possess virtually unlimited range and the ability to evade any existing or foreseeable missile‑defence architecture. Computer‑generated imagery showed the missile flying across the Atlantic, skirting the southern tip of South America and striking a target in Florida, reinforcing the intended message of global reach and invulnerability.

The immediate geopolitical context included the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from the Anti‑Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in June 2002; the deployment of Aegis Ashore sites in Romania (declared operational in May 2016) and in Poland; and a broader review of U.S. missile‑defence architecture under the Trump administration. That review would culminate, in January 2025, in the announcement of the Golden Dome initiative, envisaging for the first time the deployment of missile‑defence interceptors in outer space at a projected cost of 175 billion U.S. dollars. Russian official rhetoric has consistently portrayed these developments as threatening the survivability of its second‑strike nuclear forces and thus undermining mutual deterrence.

Yet there is a striking inconsistency in Russia’s narrative. In 2001, immediately after Washington announced its intention to withdraw from the ABM Treaty, Putin publicly declared that this decision “does not pose a threat to the national security of the Russian Federation”, because Russia, “unlike other nuclear powers, has long possessed an effective system for overcoming missile defences”. This statement, cited in numerous subsequent analyses, including those of CSIS, sits uneasily alongside the alarmist tone of the 2018 speech. The contrast suggests that the primary function of the new “exotic” systems may be political and bargaining‑oriented rather than strictly military. An issue brief by the Atlantic Council in 2021 concluded that the main drivers behind Russia’s exotic nuclear systems were “genuine paranoia about the vulnerability of Russia’s nuclear deterrent and a desire to signal great‑power status to foreign and domestic audiences”, rather than clearly defined operational military requirements.

1.2 Rationale and contribution of this study

The existing academic literature on Burevestnik suffers from three major limitations. Technical assessments, such as those by Acton (Carnegie), Barrie and Boyd (IISS) or Hruby (NTI), examine the engineering feasibility of the system in depth but often bracket out the bargaining dynamics, arms‑control implications and domestic political context that shape investment decisions in risky weapons programmes. Strategic analyses by Kofman, Panda, Sokov, Arbatov and others tend to treat the technical dimension as given, implicitly assuming that substantial Russian investment is evidence of confidence in the concept’s viability, a premise that is far from self‑evident given the record of repeated test failures and the 2019 Nyonoksa accident. The propaganda and domestic‑politics dimension has received only episodic and impressionistic treatment, despite being central to understanding the Kremlin’s interest in highly publicised “no‑analogue” systems in the context of the war in Ukraine.

This study proposes an integrated analytical framework that treats Burevestnik simultaneously as: a highly demanding nuclear‑engineering project subject to unresolved uncertainties; a tool of strategic bargaining in a collapsing arms‑control order; and a communications instrument whose effectiveness does not depend on genuine operational utility but on the perceptions it engenders among foreign elites and the Russian public. The framework rests on careful triangulation of open‑source technical evidence, doctrinal and policy documents, public‑opinion data and historical analogies, and aims to meet the standards of leading strategic‑studies think tanks such as RAND, Carnegie, Chatham House, IISS and SIPRI.

1.3 Historical precedents: U.S. exotic weapon systems as bargaining tools

Placing Burevestnik in historical perspective requires analysing U.S. precedents where ambitious or “exotic” weapon programmes functioned as bargaining tools in arms‑control diplomacy. Three cases are especially instructive: the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the deployment of Pershing II intermediate‑range missiles in Western Europe, and the MX Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missile.

Announced by President Ronald Reagan in his televised address of 23 March 1983, SDI called upon American scientists to develop technologies that would render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete”. Formalised in January 1984, the programme envisioned a layered missile‑defence system combining ground‑based and space‑based components, including orbital kinetic‑kill vehicles, X‑ray lasers pumped by nuclear explosions and neutral‑particle‑beam systems. The scientific community voiced immediate scepticism about the technical feasibility of many of these concepts, and the programme quickly acquired the derisive moniker “Star Wars”. Yet SDI had a profound impact on superpower diplomacy. As Aaron Bateman shows in his 2023 article in Arms Control Today, missile defence became the principal obstacle to progress at the Reykjavik summit in October 1986, where Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev came close to agreeing the elimination of all nuclear weapons, only for the talks to collapse over Gorbachev’s insistence that SDI be confined to the laboratory.

Crucially, in February 1987 Gorbachev decided to “delink” SDI from the negotiations on Intermediate‑Range Nuclear Forces (INF). This decision, motivated primarily by domestic economic imperatives under perestroika and informed by technical advice that cost‑effective countermeasures to U.S. defences were available, cleared the path to the INF Treaty signed in December 1987. The treaty eliminated an entire class of ground‑launched missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometres. SDI thus functioned less as a war‑winning capability than as a destabilising bargaining chip whose eventual delinkage was politically essential for arms‑control progress.

The Pershing II deployments in Western Europe, initiated in December 1983 pursuant to NATO’s 1979 Dual‑Track Decision, similarly combined military and bargaining functions. Designed to counter the Soviet SS‑20, a mobile, MIRVed intermediate‑range missile that could reach all of Western Europe, the Dual‑Track Decision offered Moscow a choice between negotiated reductions and NATO modernisation. The deployment of 108 Pershing II and 464 ground‑launched cruise missiles sparked mass protests but ultimately contributed to the Soviet leadership’s willingness to accept the elimination of the entire class of intermediate‑range missiles under INF (FAS, INF Chronology; State Department INF Treaty materials).

Finally, the MX Peacekeeper ICBM illustrates the explicit use of a technically advanced system as a bargaining chip. The Scowcroft Commission, established in January 1983, recommended a force of one hundred MX missiles combined with a future single‑warhead mobile ICBM as part of a broader arms‑control strategy. In his 4 March 1985 message to Congress transmitting a report on the MX, President Reagan argued that without Peacekeeper the United States’ prospects for achieving equitable, verifiable reductions with the Soviet Union would be “substantially diminished”. Congressional support for MX was thus explicitly linked to its perceived utility in Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). 

2. TECHNICAL FOUNDATIONS: NUCLEAR PROPULSION FOR CRUISE MISSILES AND THE LEGACY OF PROJECT PLUTO

2.1 Open-cycle nuclear reactors and nuclear ramjets

An open‑cycle nuclear reactor used for aeronautical propulsion – a nuclear ramjet – operates on thermodynamic principles fundamentally different from those of conventional, closed‑cycle reactors employed on submarines, aircraft carriers, ice‑breakers or land‑based power plants. In a conventional pressurised‑water reactor, the primary coolant circulates in a sealed loop and transfers heat via steam generators to a secondary circuit, ensuring that fission products remain confined. By contrast, in an open‑cycle system the working fluid, heat‑transfer medium and reaction mass are all the same: atmospheric air drawn directly through the reactor core. The incoming air is decelerated and compressed in an inlet diffuser, passes through channels in the fuel elements where it is heated to temperatures of around 2,000–2,500 Kelvin by fission in highly enriched uranium, and is then expanded through a convergent–divergent nozzle to produce thrust. Conceptually elegant, the design poses formidable challenges in materials science, reactor physics and environmental protection.

2.2 Project Pluto (1957–1964)

Project Pluto, run by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory between 1957 and 1964, remains the only historical programme to have tested working nuclear ramjet engines. The Tory II‑A prototype, tested in May 1961, produced roughly 20 megawatts of thermal power, demonstrating basic feasibility. The Tory II‑C, tested in May 1964, achieved around 513 megawatts and operated for five minutes at exhaust temperatures above 2,000 Kelvin. The reactor core consisted of beryllium‑oxide ceramic fuel elements loaded with highly enriched uranium, perforated by thousands of small channels to maximise heat transfer to the air stream (Merkle, 1996). Despite these engineering successes, Pluto was cancelled in July 1964 before any flight tests of a complete missile. The reasons included grave environmental concerns arising from the continuous emission of fission products along the flight path, doctrinal shifts favouring faster ballistic missiles, and doubts about the survivability of a relatively slow, low‑flying cruise vehicle in the face of air defences.

2.3 The August 2019 Nyonoksa accident

The radiological accident of 8 August 2019 at the Nyonoksa naval test range in Arkhangelsk oblast is widely assessed as having involved a test related to Burevestnik’s propulsion. Initial Russian defence‑ministry statements referred only to an explosion during tests of a “liquid‑fuel rocket engine”, omitting any mention of nuclear material. However, Russia’s meteorological agency Roshydromet reported a transient spike in background radiation in nearby Severodvinsk – up to sixteen times normal levels between 11:50 and 12:30 local time – before quickly removing the data from its website. Rosatom later acknowledged that five of its employees had died while testing a “radioisotope power source for a liquid‑fuel rocket engine”.

European monitoring stations within the CTBTO network detected anomalous radionuclides, including ruthenium‑103, strontium‑91, barium‑140, lanthanum‑140, cerium‑143 and caesium‑137, in air samples collected between 9 and 15 August in northern Norway. The isotopic composition and relative ratios, particularly between barium‑140 and lanthanum‑140, are characteristic of recent fission events rather than emissions from routine power‑reactor operations or long‑cooled spent fuel. Peer‑reviewed analyses in the Journal of Radiological Protection and the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity conclude that the data are consistent with an accident involving a small reactor undergoing critical operation shortly before the release (Becker et al., 2020; Spykman et al., 2021).

3. BUREVESTNIK IN CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN NUCLEAR DOCTRINE

3.1 Escalation management and the “escalate-to-de-escalate” debate

Understanding Burevestnik’s doctrinal role requires engaging with the evolution of Russian thinking on escalation management. The notion that Russia embraces a formal doctrine of “escalate to de‑escalate” – that is, the limited use of nuclear weapons early in a conflict to compel an adversary to back down – has been widely debated in Western policy circles. The most comprehensive assessments, by Michael Kofman and Anya Fink at CNA, argue that Western discourse has often oversimplified and mischaracterised Russian debates. Drawing on three decades of Russian‑language military publications, operational concepts and exercises, they show that Russian strategy integrates conventional and nuclear means across an escalation spectrum from peacetime competition to large‑scale war (Kofman and Fink, 2020a; 2020b).

Within this spectrum, Burevestnik contributes primarily to the credibility of Russia’s assured‑retaliation posture rather than to early, limited nuclear options. By offering, in principle, a long‑endurance, trajectory‑flexible delivery system, it is designed to appear insensitive to U.S. and allied missile‑defence developments. However, as CSIS concludes in its 2025 assessment, the missile “does not fundamentally alter the strategic balance between the United States and Russia, nor does it provide Russia with a meaningful capability it cannot already achieve through its ballistic‑missile and bomber forces” (CSIS, 2025).

3.2 Comparative ecosystem of exotic systems

Burevestnik co‑exists with other exotic Russian systems, notably the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle and the Poseidon nuclear‑powered, nuclear‑armed undersea vehicle. All three have been presented domestically as “without analogue in the world”. Their Western counterparts include the U.S. Long‑Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW, or Dark Eagle), which has suffered significant delays; the B‑21 Raider stealth bomber; and the Golden Dome space‑based missile‑defence initiative. China has deployed the DF‑17 medium‑range ballistic missile with the DF‑ZF hypersonic glide vehicle, widely considered the most mature operational hypersonic system. India, France and the United Kingdom are developing hypersonic or quasi‑ballistic systems (BrahMos‑II, ASN4G and AUKUS‑related programmes respectively). In this broader context, Burevestnik appears less as a singular revolution and more as one manifestation of a wider trend towards novel delivery systems designed to stress or circumvent missile defence.

4. NEW START AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE BILATERAL ARMS-CONTROL REGIME

4.1 Legal framework and structural gaps

Signed in April 2010 and entering into force in February 2011, the New START Treaty limited each party to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, 700 deployed launchers (ICBMs, SLBMs and nuclear‑capable heavy bombers) and 800 deployed and non‑deployed launchers combined. Its core value, however, lay in its verification regime: comprehensive data exchanges, notifications and on‑site inspections that provided transparency and reduced the risk of worst‑case assumptions (U.S. Department of State, 2010; Arms Control Association, 2025).

From the outset, New START contained important blind spots. The definitional focus on ballistic missiles and bombers meant that long‑range nuclear‑armed cruise missiles were only indirectly constrained via counting rules for their carriers. Novel systems like Burevestnik, Poseidon and certain hypersonic glide vehicles fell outside the treaty’s quantitative limits by design or by interpretive choice. Analysts such as Panda (2019) and Kristensen (2020) have highlighted how these gaps created incentives for both parties to explore unconstrained niches, thereby eroding the spirit of mutual restraint even while the letter of the treaty was observed.

4.2 Suspension, expiry and the post-New START landscape

On 21 February 2023 Russia announced the suspension of its participation in New START, halting inspections and data exchanges. Although Moscow indicated it would continue to observe the central numerical limits until the treaty’s scheduled expiry, verification mechanisms were effectively dismantled. The treaty then expired on 5 February 2026 after the single five‑year extension agreed in January 2021 was exhausted, and in the absence of a successor agreement. Proposals by President Putin in September 2025 to extend central limits unilaterally without restoring inspections failed to gain traction in Washington (Arms Control Association, 2025; Chatham House, 2026).

The result is an unprecedented transparency vacuum in U.S.–Russian nuclear relations. For the first time since the early 1970s there is no legally binding bilateral arms‑control instrument in force, no agreed definitions of accountable systems and no verified baseline of deployed forces. Scholars such as Kühn and Volpe (2017), Arbatov and Dvorkin (2021) and Pifer (2020) warn that this environment increases the risk that both sides will revert to worst‑case planning, potentially fuelling a new round of qualitative and quantitative competition in which systems like Burevestnik play a symbolic and bargaining role disproportionate to their military utility.

5. COSTLY SIGNALLING AND STRATEGIC BARGAINING

Within the framework of game theory, Burevestnik can be interpreted as a costly signal of Russian resolve. Thomas Schelling’s The Strategy of Conflict (1960) emphasised that credible commitments in international bargaining often require actors to incur visible costs or accept constraints that would be irrational absent a genuine intention to follow through. James Fearon (1997) refined this insight by distinguishing between “tying hands”, which creates domestic audience costs for backing down, and “sinking costs”, which involve non‑recoverable investments that signal seriousness. Andrew Kydd (2005) explored how such signalling interacts with pre‑existing mistrust to produce spirals of escalation or, conversely, opportunities for reassurance.

The Burevestnik programme exhibits both types of cost. Financial and technological investments, coupled with reputational risks from repeated test failures and the Nyonoksa accident, constitute sunk costs that no rational actor would bear if the aim were merely propaganda. At the same time, the prominence given to Burevestnik and other exotic systems in Putin’s speeches ties the Kremlin’s domestic prestige to their perceived success, rendering cancellation politically costly. For external audiences, particularly in the United States, the programme is intended to demonstrate that any attempt to gain a decisive advantage through missile defence will be offset by Russian counter‑measures, thereby encouraging Washington to return to negotiations that include both offensive and defensive systems. 

6. COMMUNICATION, PROPAGANDA AND RUSSIAN PUBLIC OPINION

Despite the intense nuclear rhetoric emanating from Russian officials and state media since the invasion of Ukraine, empirical research suggests that Russian public support for nuclear use remains limited. In a series of survey experiments conducted in 2021 and 2024, Michal Smetana and Michal Onderco examined Russian attitudes towards hypothetical nuclear‑use scenarios. Their 2025 article in the Journal of Global Security Studies and their 2024 essay in Arms Control Today report that 71 per cent of respondents opposed a limited nuclear strike against a NATO military base in Poland, even when presented with a scenario in which the alternative was a Russian defeat in a conventional conflict in the Baltic region (Smetana and Onderco, 2024; 2025). The share of respondents who would approve such a strike remained essentially unchanged between 2021 (28 per cent) and 2024 (29 per cent), despite the war in Ukraine and escalating elite rhetoric.

These findings indicate that a significant “nuclear taboo” persists among the Russian public, constraining – though not determining – the Kremlin’s options. Complementary analysis by Arndt, Horovitz and Onderco (2023) concludes that Russia’s nuclear coercion against Ukraine has failed to achieve its core objectives: Western military assistance has continued and, in some respects, intensified; Ukraine has not conceded territory under the threat of nuclear use; and the war has not been localised or limited in the ways envisaged by coercive‑escalation scenarios. In this light, Burevestnik’s main communicative function may be less about convincing foreign publics and more about sustaining a narrative of technological prowess and great‑power status for domestic consumption.

7. COMPETITION FOR STRATEGIC RESOURCES AND RUSSIA’S SEARCH FOR ARRANGEMENTS WITH EUROPE

Russia’s pursuit of exotic nuclear systems must also be viewed against the backdrop of competition for strategic resources and evolving relationships with Europe. Prior to 2022, Russia supplied around 40 per cent of the European Union’s natural‑gas imports, and was a major exporter of oil, coal and critical minerals such as nickel, palladium and certain rare‑earth elements (BP, 2023; USGS, 2024). Energy interdependence gave Moscow significant leverage over European states, a leverage reinforced by infrastructure projects like Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 designed to bypass transit states such as Ukraine and Poland (Goldthau and Boersma, 2014; Henderson and Mitrova, 2015).

The full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and subsequent European diversification away from Russian hydrocarbons have dramatically altered this landscape. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from the United States have increased sharply, while the EU has accelerated its energy transition. At the same time, demand for critical minerals essential to renewable‑energy technologies and advanced weapon systems has intensified global competition (IRENA, 2022; Bazilian et al., 2019). Russia’s efforts to expand its presence in Africa and the Middle East through arms transfers, security cooperation and private military companies such as the Wagner Group can be read in part as attempts to secure alternative revenue streams and strategic depth in resource‑rich regions (Sukhankin, 2020; Marten, 2019).

Historically, Russia has sought political understandings with key European powers – notably Germany and France – that would effectively recognise spheres of influence in the post‑Soviet space. The Dreikaiserbund of the late nineteenth century, which bound Germany, Austria‑Hungary and Russia in a loose league of emperors, is often invoked as an analogy for Moscow’s preference for great‑power concert arrangements over universalist, values‑based orders (Taylor, 1954; Kennan, 1979; Trenin, 2017). In contemporary conditions, however, Russia’s war in Ukraine, its use of energy as a coercive tool and its pursuit of exotic nuclear systems like Burevestnik have deepened mistrust in Europe, making such arrangements far more difficult to envisage. 

8. CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

Burevestnik is less a revolutionary military capability than a multi‑purpose instrument of Russian statecraft operating at the intersection of technology, strategy and politics. Technically, it faces immense challenges in materials science, reactor control and environmental safety that explain the long timeline of development, the high rate of test failures and the 2019 accident at Nyonoksa. Strategically, it does not fundamentally change the nuclear balance between Russia and the United States, but it serves as a potent symbol of Russia’s determination to offset perceived U.S. advantages in missile defence and to challenge what Moscow sees as an inequitable, U.S.‑centric security order. Politically, it functions as a tool of costly signalling in arms‑control bargaining and as a pillar of domestic propaganda about Russia’s scientific and military prowess.

The demise of New START and the absence of any successor framework create a dangerously unconstrained environment in which weapons such as Burevestnik may proliferate as “grey‑zone” systems outside formal counting rules. The historical experience of SDI, Pershing II and MX Peacekeeper underlines that exotic systems can both obstruct and facilitate arms‑control progress, depending on how they are managed diplomatically. A sober assessment of Burevestnik requires neither downplaying the risks associated with nuclear‑powered propulsion nor exaggerating its impact on strategic stability.

This study supports six broad policy recommendations. First, the United States and Russia, ideally with the eventual inclusion of China, should pursue a successor framework to New START that, at a minimum, restores verifiable limits on deployed strategic warheads and launchers and mandates transparency measures for novel systems, including nuclear‑powered and hypersonic weapons. Second, states should develop multilateral norms and notification procedures governing tests of nuclear‑powered propulsion systems, including enhanced radionuclide monitoring through the CTBTO network. Third, European governments should articulate a coherent Russia policy that combines firm defence of international law and Ukrainian sovereignty with a realistic assessment of Russian security interests and avenues for future engagement. Fourth, the EU and like‑minded partners should coordinate policies on critical minerals to avoid excessive securitisation and to reduce the scope for coercive supply disruptions. Fifth, Western sanctions should be calibrated to maximise leverage while preserving incentives for Russian restraint, with clearly communicated pathways for conditional relief. Sixth, crisis‑communication channels between Washington and Moscow – including military‑to‑military contacts – should be restored and modernised to reduce the risk of misperception and inadvertent escalation in an era of increasingly complex and ambiguous weapon systems. 

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