Many western mainstream media outlets have reported that, in retaliation for having been fired upon with US and British made missiles, last week launched an ICBM at Ukraine.
This is not strictly true. What Russia actually launched was an experimental weapon named ORISHNIK.
That is frightening enough. Although not an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), which have a range of greater than 5,500km, Orishnik is an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM), that is, it has a range of 3,000 – 5,500km. This means that an Orishnik fired from Moscow could strike pretty much any target in Western Europe or The United Kingdom.
A ballistic missile is so named because it follows a ballistic trajectory; in simple terms a parabola. A warhead is boosted high into the atmosphere or into space on a sub-orbital trajectory, usually by rocket and then re-enters the atmosphere and falls to Earth under the effect of gravity. During descent and before hitting its target, the warhead my reach speeds approaching 13,000kph and so is effectively impossible to stop. No existing anti-missile system is capable of targeting such an object.
What’s more, the Orishnik supports multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRVs), allowing a single missile to carry several warheads, each of which can strike a different target.”
One important point that mainstream media outlets have neglected to mention is that Russian officials contacted both US and Ukraine 30 minutes in advance of the Orishnik launch, to notify them and assure them that the missile did not carry a nuclear warhead.
Some reports have stated that this Orishnik did not carry any explosive payload at all, but rather delivered dummy warheads, relying solely on the kinetic energy of the impacts to cause destruction.
This video posted on YouTube from StratNewsGlobal is very informative.
Published: 28 November 2024
By: Colin Ford, In Other News