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from the remember-that-story-this-past-weekend? dept.
A few days ago, on August 8, there was an explosion on a barge in the White Sea near Nyonoksa, Russia. That explosion tragically killed seven people, nuclear engineers and technicians working on a project. The project was described as "an isotopic power source for a liquid engine installation," but let's be completely clear here: they were developing the nuclear propulsion system for a genuinely brutal and terrible weapon.
That weapon is known as 9M730 Burevestnik, known to NATO as the SSC-X-9 Skyfall, but is perhaps best understood as a modern rebirth of a terrifying American weapon concept from the 1960s known as the Flying Crowbar.
The Flying Crowbar was a nuclear-powered scramjet missile, capable of flying at hypersonic speeds with an almost indefinite range, spewing extremely radioactive exhaust and nuclear bombs all over the place.
[...] While this accident is absolutely a tragedy because of the loss of life and the significant radiation exposure in the area, the blow to the development of the 9M730 Burevestnik missile is not the tragic part.
The Burevestnik is not a defensive weapon; it's a weapon to attack at long range and spread death and destruction all along its path, even over people that have no involvement in whatever bullshit reason this thing was launched for.
Wikipedia entries on 9M730 Burevestnik and Flying Crowbar (aka Supersonic Low Altitude Missile).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Wednesday August 14 2019, @09:46AM (5 children)
So far it's been implied that the Russian 9M730 missile follows the Pluto blueprints. It just occured to me, that if it indeed is so, it cannot reasonably explain how it killed the crew. If it had a ramjet, it would need to be at speed before the reactor is started up. Hence either radioactivity or dead crew.
Nothing so far indicates that the missile is hypersonic. Whatever has been circulated in pictures hinted at more or less regular V1-descendant cruise missile layout. This gives me the overall impression that it probably just has a nuclear-heated turbojet. Direct cycle, I would assume, because in its capacity as doomsday weapon, you'd want it easy and reliable, but not really care of a bit radiation along the way. A few kilos of Plutonium in ceramic liners would make a hell (literally) of a burner. Mentioned "liquid" fuel component might still be a first stage booster (which is a bit odd, because the 3M54 uses more practical solid fuel), and that would explain the observed damage after an "oops" when trying to run up the turbojet.
Also, I must note that I disagree with the quoted tone that it is not a "defensive weapon", which makes it sound like angry Ivan is going to slaughter innocent children any day. It's a second strike thing of course, you'd only launch that thing on doomsday, or maybe one day after. In reality they probably came up with it, because the atomic scientists had to be employed with something, and some sandbox games figured out that it would divert US funds from offensive weapons to building a defensive line in the southern US, if they had a credible threat to attack from there. From this view, it would even be important that the 9M730 is subsonic and can be shot down.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @12:25PM (4 children)
The design concept calls for a reactor with little/zero shielding, if the solid/liquid fuel boosters which take it up to the speeds where the bugger of a ramjet can function go boomski, then you've lots of lovely vapourised fissile material and chunkier bits from said reactor spread over a wide area for everyone to enjoy..
So both dead crew and radioactivity are quite possible..
(Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday August 14 2019, @01:52PM (3 children)
No, it wouldn't cause anything near the radiation-over-time profile in that town. That looks like short-lived decay and neutron-activation products. If they'd lose the fresh reactor with uranium fuel in a big explosion, that'd amount to a salvo of A-10 ammo (a bit more, because it's HEU). With plutonium, the local crew would have an issue with the radiotoxicity and they'd all die of cancer, but not that fast.
There's no point in a static test-run of a ramjet, because it can't cool itself. But it would work with a turbojet. With the few puzzle pieces we have, my best guess is that they had an atomic turbojet, spun it up for a static test, and shut it down again. Vibrations during testing broke a liquid fuel line, and leaking fuel was ignited by the still-hot engine. That would make the press release with the "liquid fuel" and "isotopic power source" a perfectly correct statement, because at this point, the power was not from fission, but by short-time decay isotopes.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday August 14 2019, @08:20PM
Sounds "reasonable". A subsonic cruise missile with indefinite range carrying an atomic warhead would be a reasonable second-strike weapon. The problem would be targeting. This is always a problem with cruise missiles, but one designed to reach "anywhere on Earth" rather raises the extent of the problem, particularly since you sure won't be able to count on satellites for navigation.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by BeaverCleaver on Friday August 16 2019, @03:22AM (1 child)
Project Pluto static-tested nuclear ramjets. They just had to use a (big) store of compressed air to simulate flight. Mandatory wikipedia link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Rich on Friday August 16 2019, @08:23AM
Indeed, but that was a big test bench. They could not have run it up in the completed SLAM at a launch site. I was writing under the assumption that the Russians were about to do a test launch, or two, because there were reports about a no-fly zone and sightings of a specific shelter for the missile. Also, the no-fly-zone hints at that some airborne unit was to be tested, rather than an underwater thing.