Trump rebukes Putin for testing new missiles, tells him to end the war

Russia tested a nuclear-powered cruise missile that it said is capable of traveling thousands of miles. Trump countered that there is a U.S. nuclear submarine off Russia’s coast.

President Donald Trump rebuked Russia on Monday for testing a new nuclear-capable cruise missile instead of working to end the war in Ukraine — a testy exchange that is indicative of how relations between the countries have worsened in recent weeks.

Russia on Sunday announced a successful test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile called Burevestnik, which Russia says can carry a nuclear warhead and travel for more than 8,000 miles. Russian President Vladimir Putin, dressed in military fatigues, hailed it as “a unique product, unlike anything else in the world.”

When asked by journalists on Air Force One whether he saw the test as nuclear saber-rattling, Trump said the United States had a nuclear submarine right off Russia’s coast and that it didn’t need to travel 8,000 miles.

“I don’t think it’s an appropriate thing for Putin to be saying either, by the way. You ought to get the war ended. A war that should have taken one week is now in its soon-to-be fourth year. That’s what you ought to do instead of testing missiles,” he said.

Russia’s Skyfall cruise missile, as it is known in the U.S., has been under development for several years and has had a number of failed tests. Experts have said it is more a provocation than a major advance in military technology. Putin unveiled six “invincible” nuclear missiles in March 2018, including Burevestnik.

Commenting on Trump’s statement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would not be dissuaded from its weapons tests.

“Despite our openness to establishing dialogue with the U.S., Russia and the Russian president are guided by their own national interests. This has been the...

It’s an interesting miliary concept.

You launch a nuclear warhead carrying cruise missile that can allegedly stay aloft for days or weeks. And you have it patrol in international airspace offshore the US east coast.

The primary detection scheme vs stealth (of that missile’s sort) is satellite sensing of the launch flare. That flare was days ago. It just sits there cruising in the air, undetected and can shrink its time enroute period from “order to attack” to impact . . . down to seconds since it is so close, not minutes from the East or West coast.

This is a brilliant design.

Bistatic radar can detect any stealth by imaging where the reflected radiowaves off the surface behind and inline with the sensor drop out not reflections off the object in flight. You can use and these have been used in the past GPS signal radio waves, Starlink signals, GLONASS, Galileo as well. These have been used to image centimeter sized waves off the ocean surface using Bistatic SAR techniques. You image the radio shadow of a stealth aircraft not the reflections off it. Since that shadow is moving at several hundreds of mph it stands out from everything else.

Space based IR sensors can look down and see not only the heat of the cruise missiles exhaust pipe it leaves a several hundred degree wake of hot nuclear heated air. This stands out like a sore thumb on longwave IR sensors. Starshield the new alphabet agencies satellite network with a planned 6000+ birds will host IR sensors that can image every day meter of the earth’s surface and the skies above it in real time every where all the time all at once it’s called persistence stare capabilities and given the number of classified launches at least 100 Starshield are already up and could be many more. Add in UV and VIS spectrum imagery again with AI driven persistent stare capabilities if it’s moving the AI will find it in the pixel differencing engine and flag it on the MTI display. Once you have the high ground nothing anywhere can hide. There is other means using MMW active and passive to image shadows that move, passive microwave Doppler that can see disturbed air and air in motion a aircraft or missile is leaving a wake miles long of not only hot air it’s mixing and moving air as well all of which has a signature in some EM band. Again if you have live gigabit sat comms and distributed sensors across over locking and multiple simultaneous view angles you can do Bistatic in active and passive modes nothing can hide from this. If it moves it will make a signature that can be seen in some remote sensing platform’s data stream.

You launch a nuclear warhead carrying cruise missile that can allegedly stay aloft for days or weeks. And you have it patrol in international airspace offshore the US east coast.
...
This is a brilliant design.

It would be brilliant, if it actually existed. Global Hawk has a loiter of nearly 34 hours, without a heavy nuke payload. And that requires a full-size airplane loaded on fuel, and not-that-stealthy high-aspect wings. If the Soviets actually invented a cruise missile that can stay in the air waiting for days or weeks, that would have major technological breakthroughs that would improve aircraft all over the place, not just in a random cruise missile.

It's why our sub force is actually "brilliant", because a sub can do the same thing, only better. Much stealthier somewhere in the sea, than easily seen in the air. Can Loiter for months, not just impossible "days to weeks"...

From previous convos, you two guys actually know things.

Concerning this new Russian missile:

Starting with the wiki — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik

Firstly, it is quite full. This didn’t catch anyone by surprise.

It is loaded with Russian claims and loaded with western more or less self declared experts that say the claims are bogus.

There are also quotes from western expert sources (who seem to have actual credentials) who say the Russian claims look credible.

Issues: A “flying Chernobyl”. Nuclear powered and nuclear armed, very long flight distance and the Russian (err Soviet) history of world threatening nuclear accidents. Spraying radioactive contaminants out of the exhaust along the route of flight. Rebuttal, it doesn’t have to be loaded with fuel beyond what is required for the mission. Therefore not much mass of U235 to spray or scatter if it crashed.

Another issue, very much like Russian and US boomers. They patrol, as would this. Russian and US boomers are listened to by anti submarine forces, be they attack subs or buoys transmitting to aircraft. They make characteristic sounds. If they are loading their SLBMs for launch — IN A DRILL — they will sound just like they would sound before launching for the 70 miles from offshore Maryland to the Pentagon. They drill a couple of times per week. You can’t attack a sub (theirs or ours) because you hear pre-launch noises.

Then if they launch, you have no warning time to speak of. They have that geography advantage of our closest sub distance is from the Baltic and 100s of miles to Moscow.
This long duration cruise missile approach is like a submarine in the air.

GenPoly guy challenged their stealth via bistatic approach. Well, signals bounced away from the transmitting radar antenna have to go somewhere, and the plan would be to have a bistatic receiver be at that somewhere. Well, these things are going to cruise over the ocean. That will be quite a Navy budget lift to get bistatic receivers everywhere at sea.

IR tracking from orbit would similarly be quite a constellation. We’ll let the ground computers do the processing to ignore airliners but you can’t have satellites just hang in the air. You will have to have quite a Starlink-style of network to have something over both US coasts 24/7 with ground links transitioning from one satellite to the next (certainly credible, but hard work).

That looks like big money spent because of a relatively cheap nuclear powered cruise missile.

It really is a brilliant military idea. Is it real? Odds suggest yes. American exceptionalism is a very dangerous attitude. They are far more advanced than we are in many fields. That’s a safer attitude.

You really aren’t very good at arm waving and fear mongering, or even Deus ex machina.

When Russia comes up with Air Defense that can actually protect, say, its good buddy Iran, instead of being humiliated, I MIGHT put some credence in its other claims.

Besides, it doesn’t really matter HOW Russia directly strikes the US, if it ever does. It has no way to prevent a devastating US response, and, following, likely ruination of the entire Northern Hemisphere. So much for Russian “security”. It will have brought annihilation upon itself.

It was a stupid move to antagonize Trump, when he was already unhappy with Putin.

Oh, I think a total exchange will devastate both countries.

But Russia will lose fewer people, of course. They have fewer and they are more spread out. They also have done things like putting grocery stores underground. We have not.

As to who wins, well, assuming it requires oil to recover, our easy oil is burned. Theirs . . . still in the ground, a lot easier to recover if you are not fracking. And as I said, assuming it takes oil to recover.

Public statements don’t mean all that much. What does matter is the white papers about post-nuclear exchange. Most are classified, and we have no idea of the attitudes of the authors, be them American Exceptional leaning or Russian Exceptional leaning.

Regardless of all that, this new weapon works or it does not. It doesn’t matter if anyone is fearful about it or sneers in contempt at it. Neither attitude will affect its function.

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