The Oreshnik IRBM

Jeffrey Lewis 0:06

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I am Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog.

Aaron Stein 0:27

And I am Dr. Aaron Stein, president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, habitual coffee drinker, and in my dentist's chair, getting my annual, or I guess my semi, my biannual checkup to get my teeth cleaned when I started reading about a ballistic missile attack on Ukraine that was unlike the others.

Jeffrey 0:49

Well, I got to experience this shit when I woke up, Aaron. So cock-a-doodle-doo, mother fu- You started texting early, man. What time were you waking up? I just, I got back from India. I was at a National Academies meeting and my sleep schedule has been a catastrophe. Yesterday, I fell asleep at 7.30 and woke up at midnight and couldn't go back to sleep.

So I laid in bed for six hours. Today, I was up at 4.00. I just, it's a Travis sham awkwardly of a, of an experience. I'm, I'm tired and Vladimir Putin is not helping.

Aaron 1:28

He's giving you that surge of adrenaline because, again, you started paying in the group chat at four fifty five a.m. And I was like, what is this man doing? But now I have the answer. OK, listeners will want to know what happened. I'm going to screw that the the city of Dnipro or Dnipro. How do you pronounce it in Ukrainian?

Jeffrey 1:47

I don't know. Do we ever pronounce anything correctly in in in the arms control wonk podcast universe world? I wouldn't know.

Aaron 1:56

Okay, so I think it's Nipro, but D-N-I-P-R-O. There's video emerging of what looks like So like reentry vehicle strikes sort of clustered around a specific target. And the Ukrainians called the corresponding missile that delivered those warheads an ICBM. The US has interchangeably used intermediate and medium range ballistic missile, which we'll come back to later, leading to speculation that the Russians were using a nuclear capable system to fire at Ukraine.

Do I got that one right?

Jeffrey 2:32

Yeah, I think that's about right. I mean – So the two other things I would add is that, first, that there had been rumors that this was going to happen in the past day or so. Ukrainian telegram channels had suggested that Russia might launch an RS-26 intermediate range ballistic missile out of Kapustin Yar against a target in Ukraine in order to retaliate for strikes against Russia proper.

And then now Vladimir Putin has given a speech in which he has said this is a new type of intermediate range ballistic missile that he calls Oreshnik, Which he says has a range, I think, up to 5,000 kilometers. So lots of opportunity to talk about, you know, what it is, where it came from, what it means. But yeah.

Oh, the other thing is the target was the old Yuzhmash, which is now Pivdenmash, which is Ukraine's primary missile production facility. That's right.

Aaron 3:52

Yeah. I mean, OG arms control wonk listeners will – Remember our old episode about the RS-26? That was a long time ago. I think I was still living in Switzerland. And Yuzhmash has come up many times in the podcast because of, I guess, the old Soviet connection to many ballistic missile programs around the world.

Jeffrey 4:12

And the North Korean enthusiasm for Yuzhmash and its tacit knowledge about the production of ballistic missiles.

Aaron 4:26

Let's just say Yuzhmash's offering of specific things, say, a proliferating country would like if they wanted to, say, flip a missile over in space to deliver said warheads on targets.

Jeffrey 4:38

Indeed, indeed. So, I mean, I guess question number one, I suppose, is, you know, what the hell do we think this thing is?

Aaron 4:51

So I think – I think this is a fancy RS-26 or maybe an RS-26 itself. The RS-26 was never deployed as far as we know. Right.

Jeffrey 5:06

It was tested in the 2012-2013 timeframe and then – Sort of limped along and then got dropped from the state armaments plan, which was not, there wasn't a formal cancellation, but it was sort of widely discussed that Russia was going to concentrate on other programs.

Aaron 5:28

And I think the speculation went to the RS-26 from, well, one, the Ukrainians put it out in the telegram channels, but two, they called it an ICBM. And the RS-26s Is controversial in air quotes because it was tested out to ICBM ranges, so in excess of 5500 kilometers. Yeah, man, I don't know if it's controversial in air quotes. I think it's controversial in like bold bold lettering. Well, this was like a tamer time when the INF, we were just circumventing it. It wasn't sort of like kindling for the fire we're about ready to start.

Jeffrey 6:03

While I recognize that the RS-26, and I guess we should explain for listeners who don't remember why this was a problematic missile, I always felt it was the more serious of the two violations, even though it was technically legal. Because we maybe collectively as a country lost track of how the INF Treaty interacted with the START Treaty, and the new START Treaty gave the Russians safe harbor to do a bad thing.

So the RS-26, for listeners who don't remember, the whole INF nightmare of the late 1970s and early 1980s was that The Soviets, probably to get around the salt limits, although some people dispute this, but maybe it was to get around the salt limits. Maybe it's just because they wanted to freaking do it. The Soviets... Took an ICBM, removed the third stage, packed it with three warheads so it had a much shorter range and therefore did not count under SALT, and started deploying this system as the SS-20, which they called the Pioneer.

And that was the core of the INF debate, which is these intermediate range nuclear armed missiles that could range targets throughout Europe from the Soviet homeland. The RS-26 was the same idea. The Russians took a Yars ICBM. They pulled off the third stage. They created what they called a new combat payload, which I think we all imagined was four warheads.

And they basically tested this thing once with one warhead to an ICBM range, said, is ICBM ICBM? And, and, and then, and then started packing it full of warheads and testing it to IR IRBM ranges all the while saying it's not a violation because technically they're counting it as an ICBM. So, you know, to me, this was a serious, serious effort to circumvent the INF treaty.

And, and I think in many ways was more worrisome Than the screwdriver, the cruise missile. But as I like to say, nobody listened to me.

Aaron 8:27

So the RS-26 is just a carbon copy of what they did with the SS-20.

Jeffrey 8:31

Yeah, it's an SS-20 clone, but with a newer underlying missile.

Aaron 8:36

Right. And this was brought up. We sort of all We call it a circumvention, but we just sort of patted them on the head. And then obviously with the dissolution of the INF, these things become – and then obviously the invasion of Ukraine, these things become far more sort of tangible and real threat-wise. But again, we were told, at least the best that we told, the RS-26 basically never really entered into production or never was really deployed.

That's right. Yeah. Basically, it was never deployed. And so I do believe – That when the Ukrainians call it ICBM range, they're technically being accurate, right? It does have ICBM range under certain circumstances. But when it's packed full of warheads, and we saw a bunch of warheads sort of go boom at Yuzhmash, that it is an RS-26 or an RS-26-like missile.

Jeffrey 9:33

Yeah. I mean, one thing I would say is, and I noticed this, I put up a Twitter thread where I said, I think it's probably an RS-26. And I hedged my bets a little bit in that I observed that the US government designator for the RS-26 was always the SSX-28. And I noticed that Had taken to calling the Roubaix the SSX31.

Which is a different designation. And I don't know where that came from. I can't find any unclassified U.S. government publication using that. I certainly was never familiar with a designation like that. But that led me to wonder, because Livermore put out an unclassified document in which That was a designation that was used. And so that led me to wonder if when Rubege got reinvigorated Maybe the USIC gave it a new designation because maybe it's different in some important ways.

I don't know. But I do know that for Russia to deploy a new missile which can carry multiple warheads to 5,000 kilometers, I just... It seems crazy to me that they wouldn't just take an existing ICBM booster and use that. So, you know, we saw that it looked like...

Aaron 11:29

Which is what they did with the RS-26, by the way.

Jeffrey 11:31

Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, I just, I think... And what they did with the SS-20 before that. Exactly. So, you know, and they don't have that many... Solid propellant boosters. So my assumption still is the fact that this is now a new system called the Oreshnik may indicate changes to the front end more so than it necessarily does to the underlying booster.

Although, you know, I could be freaking wrong. I don't know.

Aaron 12:06

No, we both could be wrong because I originally thought it was the RS-26. And You know, the new designation may be because of, you know, to the front end, as you said, and Putin, because I don't know if hypersonics have achieved these sort of mythical status in the world, sort of like riding a bear shirtless or something like that, you know, made sure to put out in his press statement, and we were on, we were logging on to see if he was doing this sort of... Yeah, my 5,000 kilometer range missile is hypersonic.

Jeffrey 12:33

Is hypersonic. Yes, Vladimir, that is the definition of a ballistic missile.

Aaron 12:39

So I don't really know. It doesn't take a f***ing boat to its target. It's going to reenter at hypersonic speeds. We got it there, putty-poop. But look, let's talk about the implications here because this comes against the backdrop. We're recording this on Thursday, November 21st. When was it? On Monday. They changed or at least they sort of carried out long foreshadow changes to their nuclear doctrine, you know, Where, you know, they sort of open the aperture a little bit on the conditions in which they would use nuclear weapons.

And obviously the backdrop is the approval in certain circumstances of using attack them to strike in Russia. And so I think he's just sort of beating his chest here to show off with the system that they pulled out of the garage. But I'm curious what your take is.

Jeffrey 13:31

Well, I mean, I will say that this summer when the U.S. announced that it was going to begin Typhon deployments to Germany in 2026, Putin gave a speech in which he remarked that there were certain minor measures that Russia would take that included completing the development of certain missile systems. And so at the time, we all had a debate about what that meant.

And I think a lot of people assume that meant completion of Roubaix, or I guess now what we're going to call Arechnik, which you know.

Aaron 14:09

Roubaix is the RS-26. We didn't make that clear. Oh, sorry. Yes.

Jeffrey 14:12

That's right. The old IRBM. So my guess is that this system, Got revived some time ago, which is why it's ready to go but I also think that you know, you're not going to develop an entirely new missile in six months. No, and so maybe this system had been long in development before that, but it just stands to reason to me that Russia has taken this.

Perfectly reasonable concept they had. They had developed this system. They had decided they didn't need it. They put it on the shelf. And then this summer, they decided actually they wanted to take it back off the shelf. They probably had continued research on it. 2012, 2013 is 10 years ago, right? So, you know, and I think if you looked at ballistic and cruise missile threat, the IC assessment from 2020, they had indicated that even after testing of the system stopped, testing of equipment associated with it continued.

So I'm guessing the system went into some kind of shutdown. They kept working away at it. And then when they revived it this summer, they came back with a new improved version, which gets a new name. So I... I think both things are true. Yeah, they went back to the well and pulled something out and used that, but my sense is the development was at least sparked by Typhon.

And the use now in combat is prompted by Ukrainian strikes against Russian targets. So these things, you know, I do think they're interacting. But I think if you step back from this, like, the reality is there are a bunch of designers who've wanted to do this thing for a long time. There are a bunch of people who wanted to build this thing.

And circumstances have conspired to make it feasible for them.

Aaron 16:34

And Because it is the – let's say the – is the offspring, the cousin. It's the direct ideological heir to the SS-20. Yeah. And the SS-20 had a specific mission, right? And so they're reviving that mission, which is a specific class of ballistic missile with multiple warheads to strike Europe.

Jeffrey 16:57

Yeah. Absolutely. And it's, it's meant as a counter to Typhon. And I, I think we're seeing it as a conventional capability first because Typhon is conventional. But you do have to wonder, is the natural outcome of this that then Russia deploys this system with nuclear warheads? And then we got to come back and ask whether Typhon and Dark Eagle should be nuclear.

And, you know, then it's Euromissiles, right? Where are we going to try to put, you know, nuclear armed intermediate range missiles in Germany? Right. By the way, I don't have the transcript yet because it's not up, but it seems that Putin revived, again, his call for a moratorium on INF missiles in Europe, which I think is pretty tough given that I think they're already deployed.

But we have a really interesting policy debate, right? Do you want to ban them all or just the nuclear ones? That's all I need to say.

Aaron 18:01

And people will interpret that as his opening gambit to the incoming Trump administration. I did this. I'm threatening escalation. Here's your off ramp. Even though, again, listeners of the pod will know that the moratorium has been around since the US accused them, I think more on the screwdriver. Yeah, that's right. On the screwdriver and Putin's response to that was, we're not violating the INF.

You are with the MK-41 vertical cells, but let's just do a moratorium anyways.

Jeffrey 18:32

Yeah, I think, you know, if I had a charitable reading of the Russian view and, you know, it's charity towards the Russians is not my general attitude at the moment. But my guess is that. They had the feeling that not all violations were the same, that Rubege really was an INF violator, and they kind of saw Screwdriver as not really an INF violator.

You know, it was just really a long range. Why? I think because they just imagined that, you know, long-range cruise missiles were a normal capability, and the U.S. had lots based on ships and aircraft, and I think they felt entitled. I'm not saying their legal reasoning was correct, but I think their vibes were... That the RS-26, the Roubaix, was the bad thing and the cruise missile was kind of a thing that we should overlook.

So my guess is when they talked about the moratorium, what they were always saying is, hey, if you let us do this one bad thing, we promise not to do this much worse bad thing.

Aaron 19:40

And we haven't deployed it anyways.

Jeffrey 19:42

Right, and now their view is, okay, fine, if you don't want a moratorium, then we will deploy this new, even worse thing, in part because, you know, we're putting, you know, we're putting Typhon into Europe. Although, again, to be clear, this is some self-interested bullshit on their part. Because... Oh, yeah. Typhon is... I mean, ground-based Tomahawk is...

Exactly, like what they're doing with their cruise missile, but you know, whatever they think that you know that they have special rights, which is why the Russians are a pain in the ass to deal with. So I mean, people will want us to talk about the, the nuclear aspects of this. Oh god, yeah, the nuclear doctrine, which is a whole other doctrine. Policy is a better word than doctrine, I think, but yeah.

Policy – I mean, we could talk about that.

Aaron 20:39

Could be a whole other pod, Aaron. We do. I mean, we should just hang up and start over again. But I do think that these things are interacting. I do think that they feel that nobody takes them seriously. Well, let me rephrase that. I do think that people don't – That they think people don't take them as seriously as they think they should because they have been unable to coerce certain aspects of policy change from the US and Europe.

Jeffrey 21:03

Yeah, they believe Ukraine is theirs and they get to take it with force. Yes. And they're pissed that they suck and they can't do it. And then they're pissed that we're like, not only can you not do it, we're going to make it impossible for you to do it by aiding the Ukrainians. And then they're like, well, if we suffer a strategic defeat, we're going to start a nuclear war and commit massive collective suicide.

And they're basically throwing a temper tantrum. And I think they're pissed. That their ability to coerce us isn't working, right? Like, I think they feel like they should say... In their world, they think that they have nuclear weapons, and therefore that affords them the right to invade a certain select group of their neighbors, and because of their nuclear weapons, we're supposed to allow them to do that.

And it's, like, I sit through f***ing meetings with them, and that is the undertone of everything they're saying, and it's so whiny and irritating.

Aaron 22:10

Well, people are going to ask, like, what should we do in Europe? There's already speculation on Twitter, or I guess Blue Sky, depending on where you're at now, that this is why the Germans got Arrow. And I just want to squash that here on the podcast before this gets going too far. I'm not sure Arrow is the right system for RS-26 or RS-26 on a little bit of steroids.

Jeffrey 22:32

I mean, I will say, I think Arrow is the – It is as appropriate as the system gets, but yeah, I don't. I don't think the Russians would have any trouble – if the Russians decide to do big, big numbers of this thing, the Oreshnik now, there's no way that – I'm going to call it the RS-26.

Aaron 22:55

I don't like calling it the Oreshnik. I don't think they're that different. I think it's the same ICBM booster and I don't know why we're – he gets to take off his shirt and pound his chest and come up with a new name because he like made the warheads a little bit more squiggly or something.

Jeffrey 23:08

I mean, we don't know that. We have like some really crappy pieces of debris, which, you know, are really hard to sort of figure out like how big they are. So I, you know, I don't know. We have to wait and see. We have to get some pictures. Maybe, I don't know. You know, people do crazy things, but...

Aaron 23:26

Part of me was wondering if they did a version of the Hillbilly SM6 or the Hillbilly Tomahawk, sorry, you know, which becomes Typhon, right? But remember we just sort of jacked it up and bolted it.

Jeffrey 23:35

Yeah, those ranchery vehicles came in way too fast. I did a quick estimation because when they hit, they light up the factory and you can see how tall the chimneys are. And, you know, you can look at a satellite image and very roughly estimate how big the chimneys are. Just very roughly. And, you know, those things are coming in at like a kilometer and a half a second, which suggests that, you know, they have a really, really kind of.

You know, the ballistic coefficient is such that they're screaming through the atmosphere. So I'm, you know, that's clearly to me definitely not a cruise missile. That is something that's coming in hot.

Aaron 24:25

I didn't mean to suggest it was a cruise missile. I meant to suggest that maybe they did a hillbilly sort of like bolt the vertical launcher onto a trailer type deployment. So it became like a hillbilly ballistic missile. Again, but why would you do that when you have something probably sitting in the garage somewhere?

Jeffrey 24:42

I think – I think he told us this summer that this system was going to get finished. When he said there were certain minor measures they were going to take, I think that was him saying that this system was well along under development and they were just going to finish it. I don't know. Maybe I'm connecting dots that are – I think we hit it.

Aaron 25:02

Is there anything else that we should talk about before we wrap up this emergency podcast?

Jeffrey 25:06

Well, I mean – So what is kind of my answer? Like the Russians pound the hell out of the Ukrainians day after day after day with. Missiles, the Ukrainian defenses are overwhelmed because they can't defend the whole country. And even in the areas they try to defend, you know, ultimately, you know, it's going to be hard to consistently intercept everything.

And so, you know, we're in this stupid cycle where It's obvious that the proper solution to this is to let Ukraine target the launchers in Russia. And then the Russians are so pissed about that that they're going to use longer and longer range systems so that they can target Ukraine without getting close to, you know, where the Ukrainians can strike them.

So, I mean, it's just this shit is never going to end, right? Like the reason they're doing it from 800 kilometers away is it's basically going to be far enough away that it will be really, really hard for the Ukrainians to strike the launchers. Because again, they believe that they are entitled to strike Ukraine with impunity and not get hit back, which is crazy.

Aaron 26:27

Yes. And I keep coming back to the article we wrote at War on the Rocks about how deterrence is still working. I have no reason to go back on my basic assumptions in that piece. Do you?

Jeffrey 26:40

No. I mean, this is precisely what I would have predicted, which is The Russians are like, oh, a red line for us is letting Ukraine conduct long-range strikes into Russia. And it's like, oh, really? You're going to start a nuclear war over that? I call bullshit. No, you're not. And they're like, oh, actually, we're not. But what we are going to do is dust off this program we were developing 10 years ago so that we can continue to do conventional strikes on Ukraine from further away where you can hit us back.

Course, you know, and it's like, well, okay, but like, you know what, when we sell them Typhoon, you know, they're gonna be like, that's a red line for us, and it's like, oh, okay, really? So here's Typhoon for the, for the Ukrainians, and then they'll be like, aha, so now we're gonna use conventionally armed ICBMs that are out of range. Like, no, I think deterrence is holding, although you know, as both you and I said, there's always a little chance it's gonna break down.

Aaron 27:45

Yeah. It's a slope, but I think we're still wandering around on the – on sort of like – you're walking sideways on the slope. No, but we're not really at risk of sort of falling and sort of careening down the canyon there.

Jeffrey 27:56

I don't know, man. Can we get Putin in a room with some Aeroflot stewardesses just to see – just to get a temperature take, a heat check, a vibe check? How are you feeling, Putin?

Aaron 28:05

I created a new signal group the other day and that was the picture I used. It was him with the ladies. I didn't get invited to this signal group. It's an internal deaf peer I want. Are these your real friends, Aaron? Nah, you're my... Nobody's texting me at 4.55 in the morning except you, man. But... What I find funny is that the European hosts for missile defense, which we forever said was aimed at the Russians, will now be like, hey, look at me, look at me.

We could do something about this. And so how the world keeps on turning.

Jeffrey 28:44

I don't know, man. It's a weird time to be living.

Aaron 28:48

But anyway, Euromissiles 2... It's kind of psyched. I'm kind of psyched to relive it. I, I mean, you're a missiles to electric bugaloo, like our entire field is relevant again. We should just dump arms control from this, we should just do that. We're the Arms Racing podcast, you know, like, you know, F1's had a renaissance on Netflix, we should pitch the show up. We are the Arms Racing podcast. Go fast, go hard, go hypersonic.

We're all going to die. Turn on Kenny Loggins. Where's Kenny Loggins? Where's Kenny? Take me to the danger zone, baby. I think you're off the rails, Aaron. Yeah, this is definitely off the rails. Which means that it's time for the promo. Patreon.com slash ACW podcast to support this podcast where you can get more Kenny Loggins references than a Officer's Club bar at Oceana Miramar in 1986.

And then obviously get to do more open source research on what exactly just fell in Ukraine, if it's an RS-26 or a super steroid RS-26. Patreon.com slash ACW podcast. $3 if you're a student, $5 if you're not. Gets you access to the coolest bar in town. Or virtual bar, I should say. So, Jeffrey, welcome to Crazy Train.

We're going hypersonic. Thank you for joining me. Pleasure to talk to you.