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2024-11-21 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Russia's Firing Of ICBM On Ukraine Is Weapon's 1st Combat Use In History
[NDTV World] The missile was launched from the Astrakhan region of Russia, over 1,000 km away from the damage site in Ukraine.

Russia's Firing Of ICBM On Ukraine Is Weapon's 1st Combat Use In History

ICBMs have a range of over 5,500 kilometres.New Delhi:
Russia reportedly launched an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Ukraine, marking the first combat use of the weapon since its inception almost six decades ago. Moreover, Moscow used the Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV) technology to target "critical infrastructure" in Ukraine's Dnipro, the first-ever use of the technology too.

ICBMs have a range of over 5,500 kilometres and are built to carry nuclear, chemical and biological warheads. It can also carry a conventional warhead, which Russia reportedly used on the RS-26 Rubezh, ballistic missile. The missile was launched from the Astrakhan region of Russia, over 1,000 km away from the damage site in Ukraine.

Videos have surfaced on social media and Telegram handles, where at least warheads re-entering and targeting infrastructure in Ukraine. Russia has "denied to comment" on the launch of ICBMs though Kyiv has confirmed its use.

The launch comes just a day after Putin signed off on changes to the nuclear doctrine. The changes in the doctrine say that an attack from a non-nuclear state backed by a nuclear state will be viewed by Russia as a joint attack on it. Recently, the US has allowed Ukraine to use long-range ATACMS missiles to strike deep into Russia.

ICBM And The MIRV Tech

Rubezh is a solid-fueled ICBM equipped with MIRV technology. It was developed in 2011 and was successfully tested for the first time in 2012, hitting a target 5,800 km away from the launch site.

Solid-fuel missiles do not need to be fuelled immediately after launch and are often easier to operate. It's a mixture of fuel and an oxidizer that are bound together by a hard rubbery material and packed in a metal casing.

When solid-propellant in RS-26 burns, the oxygen from the fuel element generates enormous energy, creating thrust and helping in lif-off.

A ballistic missile follows a parabolic trajectory with a boost, mid-course and terminal stage. The highest point where the missile reaches is called apogee and for ICBMs, it is over 4,000 km. During atmospheric re-entry or terminal stage, kinetic energy coupled with the missile's speed reaches over Mach 10, making interception of the missile difficult.
Posted by Besoeker 2024-11-21 09:20|| || Front Page|| [11156 views ]  Top

#1 Barrons - Kremlin Says US 'Doing Everything' To Prolong 'War' In Ukraine
Posted by Besoeker 2024-11-21 09:33||   2024-11-21 09:33|| Front Page Top

#2 Putin can end it any day.
Posted by European Conservative 2024-11-21 09:40||   2024-11-21 09:40|| Front Page Top

#3 When you launch an ICBM the defender has to wait until after arrival to learn if it has a nuclear payload or not. Do that a few times and it creates an expectation that the next one won't be nuclear either. Deliberately controlled escalation.

Note - if NATO/Ukraine elect to respond in kind there is no guarantee that the Russians won't launch (nukes) on warning of inbound nuclear capable missiles towards Moscow. That has been their explicit promise for the past many years.

Takeaway - don't play chicken with nuclear weapons.
Posted by Clem+Elmish4239 2024-11-21 10:41||   2024-11-21 10:41|| Front Page Top

#4 #2 Yea, but Russians are sentimental about Ukraine "Mikola is a retard with tendency for psychotic violence - but he IS my brother.".
Posted by Grom the Reflective 2024-11-21 10:54||   2024-11-21 10:54|| Front Page Top

#5 ^ "And this is my other brother, Mikola."

Solid-fuel missiles do not need to be fuelled immediately after launch

Quite unlike their liquid-fuel cousins which also do not need to be fueled immediately after launch.

So what are we looking at here? Is it journalism being committed by journalists, bless their hearts, or is it AI-generated verbiage to pad the article's word count? Something I am noticing lately is repeated content on web pages, whether duplicate paragraphs of text in an article or multiple copies of the same image. It is a good thing the media have layers and layers of fact-checkers and editors.

Filed under The Enshittification of Everything
Posted by SteveS 2024-11-21 11:43||   2024-11-21 11:43|| Front Page Top

#6 Yeah that reminded me of the old “in flight missile repairman” MOS
Posted by Griter+Slash1619 2024-11-21 11:47||   2024-11-21 11:47|| Front Page Top

#7 Putin can end it any day.

Yeah, he could just knuckle under for NATO's imperialist ambitions. Then he can sit and wait for NATO's next move. Where will that be? Belarus? Kazakhstan? Kursk? Vladivostok?

Biden could end it any day too. His policy in Ukraine is an abject failure. All that he has accomplished is the loss of countless lives and vast swaths of Ukrainian territory. Now he has only two months left in office and he's doing everything he can to escalate this war to a point where Trump will have fewer options for negotiating a settlement. Biden is an evil man who doesn't give a rat's ass about all the people he has killed.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2024-11-21 11:56||   2024-11-21 11:56|| Front Page Top

#8 A bit of gallows humor:

Posted by badanov 2024-11-21 12:07||   2024-11-21 12:07|| Front Page Top

#9 Comments at #7 are unfortunately spot on. I sincerely hope Trump is working with backchannel intermediaries to neuter the Deep State and put an end this madness.
Posted by Besoeker 2024-11-21 12:07||   2024-11-21 12:07|| Front Page Top

#10 And besides all that, why would Putin end it when he's winning? He'll continue to win unless Trump can negotiate a settlement. Or unless Biden decides to go nuclear. Then we all lose.
Posted by Abu Uluque 2024-11-21 12:35||   2024-11-21 12:35|| Front Page Top

#11 Wow - I missed this. First military use of an ICBM. Seems like a measured response. Was the message received and heard? Probably not.
Posted by mossomo 2024-11-21 13:09||   2024-11-21 13:09|| Front Page Top

#12 A purely symbolic act. Many millions to send a message that no one will hear.
Posted by Angstrom 2024-11-21 14:54||   2024-11-21 14:54|| Front Page Top

#13 As a test of your early warning system, did the panels light up when(if) the launch was detected by satellite?
Posted by Procopius2k 2024-11-21 15:00||   2024-11-21 15:00|| Front Page Top

#14 "first combat use of an ICBM"
Unless you want to count the 1000 or so Germany fired at Britian in WWII.
Posted by ed in texas 2024-11-21 15:47||   2024-11-21 15:47|| Front Page Top

#15 Putin not seen in 13 days! Ill?
Posted by Chesney+Sleting4519 2024-11-21 15:55||   2024-11-21 15:55|| Front Page Top

#16 Per Putin's speech today the weapon used was "Hazel" (Oreshnik), a medium range ballistic missile with hypersonic MIRV'd warheads.

If you'll excuse the pun, a very calibrated response

By using a single medium range missile the whole DEFCON sequence wasn't tripped. Demonstrating the new capability of hypersonic MIRV'd warheads was sending a second signal. His comments asking "citizens of friendly states to leave dangerous zones" was a nice touch. And of course this speech won't be covered by Western MSM outlets.
Posted by Clem+Elmish4239 2024-11-21 15:55||   2024-11-21 15:55|| Front Page Top

#17 Link to extracts of the speech here: https://karlof1.substack.com/p/putin-announces-use-of-oreshnik?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1779344&post_id=151984892&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ezki6&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Posted by Clem+Elmish4239 2024-11-21 15:57||   2024-11-21 15:57|| Front Page Top

#18 Putin not seen in 13 days! Ill?
Posted by Chesney+Sleting4519 2024-11-21 15:59||   2024-11-21 15:59|| Front Page Top

#19 By using a single medium range missile the whole DEFCON sequence wasn't tripped. Demonstrating the new capability of hypersonic MIRV'd warheads was sending a second signal. His comments asking "citizens of friendly states to leave dangerous zones" was a nice touch. And of course this speech won't be covered by Western MSM outlets.

The Pentagon was notified prior to launch.
Posted by badanov 2024-11-21 16:17||   2024-11-21 16:17|| Front Page Top

#20 1. Biden’s authorization is a Logan Act trap for President Trump.
2. Do those Russian thingies have a screw cap to change the batteries?
Posted by hyper 2024-11-21 19:34||   2024-11-21 19:34|| Front Page Top

#21 'New' Russian missile used against Ukraine not hypersonic, defense officials say

OK. The launch was well announced.
Where did it come down?
Posted by Skidmark 2024-11-21 22:48||   2024-11-21 22:48|| Front Page Top

#22 Where did it come down?

In Dnipro. The Yuzhmash defense plant, Dnepropetrovsk Oblast.
Posted by SteveS 2024-11-21 23:09||   2024-11-21 23:09|| Front Page Top

05:28 Whiskey Mike
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