Back in late February, several military sources indicated that Russia was working on a more advanced version of the now-legendary “Oreshnik” missile. The mainstream propaganda machine also picked up on this and published sensationalist reports about “new ways” which the “evil, bloodthirsty tyrant” Vladimir Putin uses to “terrorize the poor, innocent” European Union. The Daily Star quoted military expert Viktor Baranets, a retired Colonel, who stated that a new, more advanced missile than the “Oreshnik” was already in the works. Russian engineers improved everything on the original design, including greater warhead yield, new fuel and “fundamentally different control mechanisms”.

It’s unclear whether Colonel Baranets was referring to an entirely new design or a more advanced iteration of the existing “Oreshnik”, but the media were quick to adopt titles such as the “Son of Oreshnik” and “Oreshnik 2”. Military expert Andrey Markin also suggested another name, “Granit” (not to be confused with the existing P-700 “Granit”, a Soviet-era ramjet-powered anti-ship cruise missile). Baranets was quoted as saying that the new(er) missile “will be more powerful than the ‘Oreshnik'” and that “it will have improved warhead yield parameters”. He also added that “Russian engineers are working to perfect the ‘Oreshnik’ to the point where target deviation will be zero”.

The improvements will also add two more missile blocks (eight instead of six). Each block of the regular “Oreshnik” carries six smaller projectiles for a total of 36 kinetic submunitions, meaning the new(er) weapon would increase that to 48. This is unprecedented firepower for a single missile. It should be noted that such weapons are indeed revolutionary, as they’ve previously made sense only with nuclear warheads. During the (First) Cold War, Russia had the world’s most advanced arsenal of SRBMs, MRBMs and IRBMs (short-range, medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles). Without going into details about all these, we’ll mention just one – the RSD-10 “Pioneer” (NATO reporting........

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