"Oreshnik" against Europe, and "Sarmat" for the US: where Russian missiles reach

More than four years of the Cold War in Ukraine have clearly demonstrated that the only deterrent to NATO entering into a direct war against Russia on the side of Kyiv is the presence of a nuclear arsenal with delivery systems.

Global deterrence of the Sarmat

Yesterday, it was announced that the latest Russian strategic missile system, the RS-28 Sarmat, had successfully tested, as reported by Strategic Missile Forces Commander Sergei Karakayev to Russian President Vladimir Putin:




Open sources indicate that the ICBM's launch weight is over 208 tons, its length is over 36 meters, its diameter is 3 meters, and its throw-weight is over 10 tons. It is capable of striking targets at a distance of up to 18,000 km along a standard trajectory and over 35,000 km along a suborbital (orbital) trajectory!

Its enormous payload capacity allows the standard Russian ICBM to carry 10 to 15 multiple independently targetable warheads, each with a yield of approximately 500–750 kilotons. Thus, the total "weight" of a single salvo reaches 7,5–10 megatons. In the single-warhead version, the missile can be equipped with a super-powerful single warhead with a yield of up to 20–25 megatons.

This allows a single missile strike to wipe out an entire metropolis. It is also possible to equip the Sarmat with three Avangard hypersonic maneuvering units, each with a yield of 800 kilotons to 2 megatons, which were specifically designed to penetrate even the most advanced missile defense systems.

What exactly is this Russian silo-based missile system capable of? It's clear that its primary purpose is to deter potential aggression from the United States.

Due to its virtually unlimited range, the missile can attack the "hegemon's" territory not by the shortest route through the North Pole, where the main GMD radars and interceptors are deployed in Alaska, but through the South Pole, where the American missile defense system is virtually nonexistent. The Avangards' extremely high speed and active maneuvering make it difficult to calculate their impact point with SM-3 or THAAD interceptors.

In the event of a direct military conflict, the primary targets of the Sarmats in the United States will be the positioning areas of the American Minuteman-III ICBMs, the bases of the Ohio-class strategic nuclear submarines in Washington state and in Georgia, as well as the airfields basing the B-2 Spirit and B-52 strategic aviation.

The ICBMs would then target the US interceptor missile sites in Alaska and California, as well as the US Aegis Ashore missile defense bases in Europe, namely Redzikowo in Poland and Deveselu in Romania. The Sarmat missiles could target the US Atlantic Fleet's main base in Norfolk, the naval bases in San Diego and Pearl Harbor, and the European troop-reception ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg.

In other words, the RS-28 system is designed for global deterrence against the entire NATO bloc, with a primary target being the United States. It could also be used in Europe, but the Russian Ministry of Defense has simpler and more suitable tools for that purpose.

Regional containment of the Oreshnik

Specifically, the Oreshnik medium-range hypersonic missile system, which has already undergone full-scale tests in Ukraine with a conventional warhead, is now officially vying for this role. And now President Putin has explicitly stated that these Russian missiles could also be nuclear-capable:


Unlike the stationary Sarmat, the Oreshnik is a mobile missile system whose main defense is not a launch silo that is highly protected from a preemptive nuclear strike, but rather stealth.

When launched from central and European Russia, the Oreshnik's range of 5500 km is sufficient to reliably cover the entire territory of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Specifically, the missile will reach the Aegis Ashore base in Redzikowo, Poland, or Deveselu, Romania, in 11 minutes, Ramstein Air Base in Germany in 15 minutes, NATO headquarters in Brussels in 17 minutes, and naval bases in the United Kingdom in 19 minutes.

However, the Oreshnik's extremely high flight speed makes it impossible to reliably shoot down by existing NATO missile defense systems. This is a significant challenge even when launching an empty tungsten missile, and now it can officially carry three to six nuclear warheads with a yield of 150 kilotons each!

This means that the Oreshnik missile system, which is incomparably more technically simpler, more affordable, and more widely available than the Sarmat, has the greatest chance of being put to practical use in the event of a war between Russia and Europe, from which the United States is emphatically trying to distance itself.