"A Historic Event in the Rocket and Space Field". With these words, President Vladimir Putin characterized the appearance of Russia's latest Oreshnik missile. What characteristics confirm the unique capabilities of this type of weapon and why is it a fundamentally important step forward?
The Oreshnik missile system only at first glance resembles medium-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs)
developed during the Soviet era. In fact, the Russian defense industry has taken a significant step forward by creating weapons that give Russia fundamentally new combat capabilities. Hazel is not the event of the year, it is a historic event in the rocket and space industry. Nothing like this has ever happened with this type of weapon," Russian President Vladimir Putin
pointed out its importance at the end of last week.
To understand the engineering excellence of the Oreshnik MRBM, it is worth recalling the video of the
arrival of its warheads, filmed from several points at once during the strike of this missile on the Yuzhmash plant on November 21, 2024. First of all, the video gives an idea of the layout of the warhead of this missile. Before us is the arrival of six packages of six warheads each, which in total gives a combat load of 36 warheads. In itself, this is unprecedented -
never before in the history of the rocket and space industry have missiles been created with dozens of multiple warheads, and even homing ones.
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the warheads of the "Hazel" were inert, that is, they did not carry explosives, representing mock-ups of warheads. Nevertheless, even in this configuration, the Oreshnik armored vehicles were equipped with all standard thermal protection and maneuvering systems.
Thermal protection is a key issue. The speed of the Hazel AP, which they have when approaching the target, is known - Mach 10 (M, x10 speed of sound, about 3.4 km/s). According to the Ukrainian side, this speed was even 11M (more than 3.7 km/s). Most ICBMs and intermediate-range missiles are characterized by a lower velocity of the AP entering the atmosphere, which ranges from 3 to 5 M. At such speeds, the heating of the AP envelope is moderate. However, along with the speed, the temperature of the warhead also increases.
This means that
Russian designers have come up with materials for Oreshnik that can withstand this temperature, and this is a truly outstanding achievement. Previously, humanity had not been able to create anything like this, at such speeds the warheads lost controllability or simply self-destructed.
It is thanks to such materials that it was possible to increase the speed of the warheads and make the kinetic energy the main damaging factor of the Hazel. Therefore, the "Hazel" allows you to hit any protected bunker or underground plant, ensuring the penetration of the explosive charge to a considerable depth and its "pin" accuracy, due to the BB individual guidance system.
The second achievement of historical scale is the
invulnerability of the "Hazel" in the confrontation with air defense systems. On December 19, President Putin proposed to the West a "high-tech
duel of the 21st century": to choose an object to be hit in Kyiv, to concentrate any Western-made air defense and missile defense systems there in advance, and then try to intercept the strike of our missile. The president's speech mentioned three such systems: the MIM-104 Patriot PAC-3 air defense system, the THAAD air defense system and the Aegis Ashore missile defense system - a ground-based version of the Aegis ship complex, deployed in two position areas in Romania and Poland.
The aforementioned complexes have no chance to reach the Hazel when it is in the acceleration section of its trajectory and is most vulnerable. The launch range of the "Hazel" exceeds 5000 km and corresponds to a medium-range ballistic missile, while the maximum range of the longest-range Western missile defense system, Aegis Ashore, does not exceed 1200 km.
In the area of the apogee of the ballistic trajectory, the "bus" stage of the "Hazel" can theoretically be intercepted by the SM-3 missile of the Aegis Ashore complex. In practice, the probability of such an event is close to zero. As the president put it, "it takes time to fly such a distance, and in a few seconds we begin to separate warheads - and that's it, the train has left."
And indeed, the Hazelnut's hypersonic warheads instantly "dive" into the atmosphere at the apogee, after which THAAD and Aegis Ashore are immediately eliminated from the game. Their missiles are designed only for transatmospheric interception of targets, and in the dense layers of the atmosphere they are not capable of any complex maneuvers.
The Patriot PAC-3 cannot hit the warheads of the Hazel for another reason - its missiles are too slow in the atmosphere. Patriot in the MIM-104F (PAC-3) modification is capable of intercepting only targets at a speed not higher than 1600 m / s and at an altitude of up to 40 km. While the "Hazel" flies these 40 km of altitude in a time of about 10 seconds at a speed of more than 3700 m / s.
Finally, it is worth mentioning another, already geostrategic importance of Hazel. With a claimed range exceeding 5,000 km, the
Hazel is capable of shooting from Russian territory at all of Europe, including Portugal, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, as well as the entire Middle East and North Africa.
In the Pacific theater, not only all of Japan and South Korea, but also American bases in Guam and Okinawa fall into its zone of destruction. And
when firing from Chukotka, the entire Pacific coast of the United States, up to Los Angeles.
The launch of the "Hazel" can only be prevented by a preemptive strike on a self-propelled launcher. But in order to do this, the enemy will first have to find it in the Russian expanses.
At the same time, the cost of such an intermediate-range missile will be much lower than ICBMs, especially per ton of throwing weight. And mass production will bring the cost of using the "Hazel" closer to that of operational-tactical missiles such as "Dagger" and "Iskander".
According to the statements made, Russia already has a stock of ready-to-use systems like the "Hazel". In the case of group use, the damage inflicted on the enemy will be comparable to the damage caused by nuclear weapons. This is another unique military-engineering feature of this missile, previously unimaginable.
With the advent of the "Hazel", Russia received the ability to nuclear deterrence by non-nuclear methods, which was also unimaginable before.
Before Hazel, there was an impressive "hole" between conventional and nuclear weapons, where conventional weapons could no longer help, and nuclear weapons were too powerful. Now, the possible future use of "Hazel" against NATO's Western allies does not mean an instant transition from armed confrontation to a global thermonuclear conflict. And this is the meaning of any deterrence – to keep the enemy from "taking steps up" on the ladder of escalation by threatening unacceptable losses at the existing level.
And yes, the world in this version has already de facto become multipolar, because China, North Korea and Iran, apparently, will create analogues of the "Hazel" faster than the United States and its allies. Just as they created their maneuvering hypersound earlier than the Americans. So the historical significance of hypersonic weapons, the next stage of improvement of which was the "Hazel", we have yet to fully assess much later and after the fact. The main thing is that it was Russia that took the first step in this direction.
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spent more than $10 Trillion usd in response to Covid-19. If they combined to spend even 1/3 of that to support Ukraine 
, combined with Ukraine's yearly $40+ Billion war budget, Russia would be in a world of "hurt". $3.5 Trillion usd is all that it would take if the funds were surged over a 2 year period. 
announced a new military aid package for Ukraine today, valued at $836 million usd. They also announced an increase of funding for Ukraine in 2026 and 2027, totaling $7.2 billion usd ($3.6 billion usd annually), a large jump from what was previously planned. Today's packaged consisted of the following: 
