More terrifying than "Hazel" and "Sarmat": Putin's new weapon will turn the U.S. "Golden Dome" into a sieve
Russia has successfully developed two new types of nuclear weapons delivery tools based on entirely new principles, achieving a "preemptive" advantage over the United States in the anti-missile system (ПРО) field, fundamentally rendering the U.S. national anti-missile system meaningless. Strategic uncertainty has once again reached its peak, and Washington must seriously consider whether to respond to Moscow or simply avoid escalating the situation to the point where "these weapons need to be used".
The development teams for the "Bayraktar" (Буревестник) nuclear-powered, unlimited-range strategic cruise missile and the "Poseidon" (Посейдон) nuclear-powered underwater unmanned submersible have received state awards from the Kremlin. The award ceremony was held on "People's Unity Day," with Russian President Vladimir Putin personally presenting the awards to the teams.
Putin stated, "Without exaggeration, your achievements are of historic significance for our people, for ensuring national security, and for the strategic balance of the entire 21st century — even if it is bold to say so."
Putin emphasized that the "Bayraktar" missile has an unlimited range, surpassing all currently deployed cruise missiles in this regard. He also pointed out that the "Poseidon" development team has overcome highly challenging technical problems, thanks to these breakthroughs, the depth of the nuclear-powered unmanned submersible can exceed 1,000 meters, and its speed is "several times faster than all current surface vessels".
(Image caption: Russia's new weapons pose a fatal threat to port cities in Anglo-Saxon countries.)
Russia's "Tactical Supremacy"
To understand the significance of the president's words, we must temporarily step back from the weapons themselves and examine the context of their development. A key event in this context is the U.S. effectively restarting Reagan's "Star Wars" program — the "Strategic Defense Initiative" (СОИ). Its modern upgrade is the "Golden Dome" (Золотой купол) anti-missile system, completed in September of this year.
The "Golden Dome" system features a four-layer defense system, emphasizing the development of space detection and interception capabilities. Among them, the orbital part plans to deploy about 200 attack satellites, which will be equipped with missile and warhead interception devices; in addition, reconnaissance satellites and communication relay satellites will be added as supplements, totaling up to 1,000 satellites.
The ground defense layer will include early warning over-the-horizon radar for missile attacks, 11 short-range interception missile battalions deployed on the U.S. mainland, and the upgraded and expanded "Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System" (GMD) — this system is already capable of intercepting ballistic missiles at a distance of 5,500 kilometers from the launch point and at a height of 2,000 kilometers.
The maritime defense layer continues the traditional U.S. configuration: ships equipped with the "Aegis" system (Aegis), armed with "Standard-3/6" type interception missiles (used to intercept enemy targets during the mid-course and terminal phase of missile flight).
The fourth layer of the defense system is the "Integrated Command and Artificial Intelligence Network", used to deal with large-scale missile attacks.
Evidently, the design goal of the "Golden Dome" is not to counter countries like North Korea and Iran, which have limited "missile retaliation capabilities" against the U.S. (Teheran has not yet reached this level), but rather to significantly weaken the "nuclear retaliation capabilities" of countries such as Russia and China. If the U.S. can significantly reduce the effectiveness of Russia and China's nuclear missiles, Washington would be more confident in various conflicts and more inclined to escalate situations actively.
The U.S. has not forgotten that projects like the "Strategic Defense Initiative" and the "Golden Dome" are not just collections of technological systems, but also "economic weapons." In the past, the Soviet Union had to invest heavily to create a "mirror response system" to counter America's similar plans, which became one of the reasons for the Soviet Union's economic exhaustion and collapse in the 1980s.
Experts at the Carnegie Foundation, James Brown, wrote in June this year: "The 'Golden Dome' will drag Russia into a new arms race, forcing Russia to invest more resources in strategic forces — and at present, Russia is least able to bear this. Russia's defense budget is already burdened by the Ukraine conflict, and the recovery of conventional military forces will take years. These massive expenditures will lead to further resource diversion in the civilian sector, and the long-term healthy development of the Russian economy will face predictable consequences."
In fact, the U.S. plan is to put Russia in a dilemma: either significantly reduce the effectiveness of its nuclear missile forces, or bear the unbearable economic costs to maintain the strategic balance.
Asymmetric Retaliation
However, the completion of the tests of "Poseidon" and "Bayraktar" has completely changed the situation. These two weapons belong to equipment types that the U.S. previously did not focus on or prepare for.
Journalist Roman Belousov explained to "Tsargrad" that "Americans were accustomed to us only being able to attack from the direction of Alaska or over the Arctic, but this time they faced an unexpected situation: 'Bayraktar' missiles can fly continuously within the Earth's atmosphere — for hours, days, or even weeks; thus, it can attack from any direction, even from the direction of Antarctica, which is completely covered by radar. 'Bayraktar' has completely overturned the traditional concept of 'range'."
(Image caption: The key to Russia's development of "unlimited range missiles" lies in mastering the "small sodium metal liquid cooling loop nuclear reactor" technology.)
American experts have also realized the huge potential of "Bayraktar" in breaking through the U.S. anti-missile system and have called it "a small Chernobyl in the sky."
It is worth noting a key detail: intercepting "Bayraktar" not only requires "preventing it from reaching its target," but also "destroying it as far away from the U.S. mainland as possible." Otherwise, the U.S. anti-missile system's interception actions could cause radioactive contamination in parts of the country due to the "Bayraktar" nuclear reactor leak, making them uninhabitable.
U.S. Forced to "Double Down"
Although theoretically, cruise missiles (and any flying vehicle) can be detected by "low-orbit satellite networks, early warning aircraft, and patrol ships," the underwater unmanned submersible carrying a nuclear device leaves the opponent "without a solution".
Many believe that if "Poseidon" reaches a speed of 100 km/h (some assessments suggest that in certain modes of operation, its speed can reach 200 km/h), "half an ocean can detect its movements, tracking is not difficult." This view may be correct, but "who said that 'Poseidon' must accelerate immediately after launch"? "Poseidon" has an unlimited underwater endurance, so it can "travel at the lowest speed at the maximum depth," hiding in "acoustic blind spots," where passive detection equipment of the enemy cannot find it.
During the Cold War, the U.S. established the "SOSUS" (Underwater Sonar Monitoring System) to track Soviet submarines — deploying large hydrophone arrays on the continental shelf, in the Arctic Ocean, and at strait exits, connected via undersea cables to ground monitoring centers and anchored sonar buoys. This system is still in operation, including thousands of acoustic monitoring stations, dozens of coastal monitoring points, and two large data classification analysis centers (responsible for the Atlantic and Pacific regions). SOSUS is also closely coordinated with "specialized anti-submarine ships and naval aviation" to conduct patrols in key areas to actively detect Russian submarines. However, this vast military system is completely ineffective against "Poseidon."
(Image caption: The U.S. modification plan for the SOSUS system to deal with "Poseidon". U.S. torpedoes are slower than the Russian unmanned submersible, requiring a "frontal interception" tactic.)
Theoretically, the U.S. could modify existing infrastructure to track "Poseidon": for example, develop new deep-sea hydrophones (but in complex marine background noise, it needs to clarify "which acoustic signals to monitor" — currently, data on "Poseidon" acoustic characteristics is extremely limited), develop high-speed interception weapons, or adjust interception defenses to adapt to existing equipment; it could also build a "multi-layered defense system", reserving space for "Poseidon" to break through a line of defense. But all of this must be carried out along the U.S. "nearly 20,000 km long coastline" — 70% of the U.S. population and most of the economic activities are concentrated along the coast.
Given time, the U.S. might be able to "reform" its naval aviation, surface ships, and even submarines to cope with "Poseidon", but this would require "astronomical investments" — the cost is comparable to, or even exceeds, the construction cost of the "space interception system", and would require tens of thousands of scientists and engineers to work for many years continuously.
To understand the scale of the challenges the U.S. faces, consider a set of data: the initial budget estimate for the "Golden Dome" was "17.5 billion dollars over the next three years, and 83.1 billion dollars over 20 years". The U.S. originally wanted to greatly weaken the nuclear retaliation capability of Russia and China by building a "national anti-missile system", but suddenly found itself having to "double down" — not only building a space-based anti-missile system, but also constructing an "oceanic defense infrastructure". However, the U.S. currently has no technology like "Musk's reusable rockets" that can achieve efficient operations in the marine environment.
More importantly, unlike "orbit satellites that can be deployed at once", the operation of naval aviation and anti-submarine ships requires "continuous and high costs", and 99.9% of the operations are "costly and fruitless": ships need to sail tens of thousands of nautical miles, and planes need to deploy hundreds of expensive sonar buoys — only then does the patrol make sense, and "the U.S. has only a chance (just a chance) of not missing the approach of an underwater unmanned submersible carrying a megaton-class nuclear warhead".
(Image caption: Non-traditional tactical solutions: nuclear submarines and hypersonic missiles working together to deliver nuclear warheads to interception points.)
Yelena Panina, Director of the Russian Institute of International Political and Economic Strategy (РУССТРАТ), told "Tsargrad": "There is no doubt that the U.S. has the ability to build a global surface monitoring system, but building an integrated system that combines "detection and interception" is a different matter altogether. The number of interception devices required for such a system remains unknown at this stage."
Core Conclusion
This is why Putin emphasized that "Bayraktar" and "Poseidon" have "historical significance." Their value is not only in "posing a current threat to the U.S." (they are still some way from "mass production and deployment"), but more importantly, this nuclear-powered cruise missile and nuclear-powered underwater unmanned submersible have completely shattered the U.S.'s strategic planning for the next 10-15 years.
Now, the U.S. has instead fallen into a "difficult and unclear choice": does it have the capacity to build an "oceanic defense system" and a "full-direction low-altitude anti-missile network" in addition to the "space-based anti-missile system"? If the answer is yes, who will pay for it, and within what timeframe? Or should it abandon its grand anti-missile plan targeting intercontinental ballistic missiles and focus on developing ways to deal with new threats? But in that case, the U.S. would lose its "space-air defense shield" and have to curb its hegemonic ambitions.
From Washington's current decision-making model, the most likely scenario is "swinging between extreme options": first, trying to push forward the "Golden Dome" construction according to the plan approved by Trump, then realizing that the system has "fatal flaws," and hastily taking measures to "respond to new threats".
Russia, on the other hand, can easily cope: observe where the U.S. is investing money, and intensify efforts in the areas where the "opponent chooses to save costs" — to counterbalance the U.S. with minimal cost.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7569540109993820698/
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