Russia probably can’t actually build its doomsday weapons

Russia and its President, Vladimir Putin, have made a lot of waves and headlines in recent days with their claims of magnificent weapons that can fly faster than the speed of sound, hit targets with untold destructive capability, and deliver a stunning Bolshoi suplex that just knocks the Guile right out of opponents.

The last example was actually from Street Fighter, but Putin's plans for the promised miracle weapons are just as real as Zangief.

This is the real Cold War.

The prime case in point is a recent, incredibly deadly nuclear explosion near a weapons site in Severodvinsk, Russia on Aug. 8, 2019. It killed two people, and emergency responders had to get to the site in hazmat suits. This was no rocket engine test, unless that engine is nuclear-powered. Which it was.

The United States has tested a missile like the one Russia was testing in August. NATO has dubbed the Russian nuclear-powered missile the SSC-X-9 Skyfall. When the U.S. put a nuclear reactor on a missile, we called it Project Pluto. Whatever you want to dub it, know that it's basically a nuclear missile with a nuclear reactor, spreading nuclear material from its engines wherever it goes.

American scientists scrapped it because it would be an environmental disaster. Putin seems to have no such reservations. But that doesn't matter.

Whatever the test was, there are nuclear weapons experts who cast doubt on the idea that Russia has the finances or technical ability to create such superweapons. One of these experts believes the Russians are just throwing weapons ideas at a wall like spaghetti to see what sticks.

"I don't think it can all stick," Ian Williams, the deputy director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Foreign Policy. "It's just the novelty of it. No other country is even considering this kind of thing. It's the most technologically unproven, probably the most expensive in the long run."

More likely, Putin is trying to sell the idea of Russian superweapons, hearkening back to the good old days of the Soviet Union, where Russians had pride, dammit, even if they couldn't always buy cucumbers. Putin is promising as much in recent days, introducing the superweapons in a March 2018 address to the nation. It's only been a couple of years since Russia emerged from a financial crisis caused by the devaluation of the Russian Ruble – but with more and more economic sanctions imposed on it, the country is hardly out of the woods.

When Putin introduced the weapons last year, he challenged Russia's top brass to name the weapons. I'm sure we could do better – how about the Pipe Dream torpedo or the Fukushima Missile?