Oct 26, 2025
A test has demonstrated the missile’s ability to evade enemy missile defense systems, Chief of General Staff Gerasimov has told President Putin. Here’s what makes Burevestnik a genuine strategic gamechanger.
The defining feature of the 9M730 Burevestnik (Russian ‘Storm petrel’, NATO reporting name SSC-X-9 Skyfall) is its nuclear propulsion system. Its small onboard nuclear reactor gives it effectively an unlimited range.
Unlimited range means:
- the capability to loiter in the air for days on end
- the ability to circumnavigate the entire globe, if necessary, to reach its target
- the capacity to evade concentrated defenses, and strike from unexpected attack vectors
Stealth
Since it’s a cruise missile, the Burevestnik can hug the ground on approach at altitudes below enemy radar’s ability to detect, making interception challenging if not impossible.
That’s because no traditional ballistic flight trajectory and no range limits means there’s no point where defenses can be deployed en masse to stop it.
Strategic Response
First unveiled by President Putin in 2018, the Burevestnik’s development began in the early 2000s in reaction to the US pullout from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and Pentagon efforts to ring Russia with missile defense systems (Aegis, Aegis Ashore, including in Poland and Romania).
The Burevestnik and other groundbreaking strategic Russian systems like it (Avangard HGV, Zircon naval hypersonic missile, Kinzhal air-launched missile, Poseidon unmanned submarine, Sarmat heavy ICBM) guarantee Russia’s ability to respond to aggression, even in an enemy decapitation strike scenario (like US Conventional Prompt Strike/Prompt Global Strike).
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