In March 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...unveiled to the world a new cruise missile, the Burevestnik ("Storm Petrel"). The missile was part of a whole slew of new nuclear delivery systems Putin claimed Russia was developing in response to U.S."resisting arms-control negotiations, developing new missile-defense systems, and adopting a more aggressive posture in its nuclear strategy."
"No one listened to us," Putin was quoted in The Washington Post as saying. "Listen to us now."
Burevestnik is one of the most diabolical of Putin’s new wonder weapons, which is really saying something considering the weapons include a 100-megaton nuclear torpedo. Unlike most cruise missiles, which are typically powered by turbofan engines and have ranges of 800 to 1,000 miles, the new cruise missile is nuclear powered.
Nuclear power powered cruise missiles use a sustained nuclear reaction instead of jet fuel, resulting in theoretically unlimited range. So unlimited, in fact, that a missile like Burevestnik could theoretically be launched days or weeks before an attack, taking the long way around and infiltrating U.S. air space from unexpected angles. Want to take off from Siberia, fly to the Southern Hemisphere, and attack Houston from the Gulf of Mexico? A nuclear-powered engine can do that for you.
Or at least it could, if it worked. Russia has tested Burevestnik twelve times so far and according to U.S. intelligence only one flight was successful by any measure. A November 2017 test flight from Pank’ovo, a remote arctic base on Russia’s Yuzhny Island, flew for a little more than two minutes before crashing back down to Earth.