Russia Tests Nuclear-Powered Cruise Missile, Torpedo

November 2025

Russia successfully conducted Oct. 21 the first long-range flight test of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, a Russian military official said. This was followed Oct. 29 by announcement of a test of the Poseidon nuclear-powered and nuclear-capable unmanned underwater vehicle.

The latest Burevestnik test was announced by Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, at an Oct. 26 meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

Gerasimov said the nuclear-capable missile, which bears the Russian designation 9M730, flew for 14,000 kilometers over 15 hours and “completed all prescribed vertical and horizontal maneuvers, showcasing a high capability to evade missile-defense and air-defense systems,” according to an official transcript of the meeting.

Putin said the Russian armed forces still had to identify a mode of employment for the missile as well as prepare relevant infrastructure. Open-source satellite imagery analyst Decker Eveleth located in September 2024 a possible launch site for the Burevestnik next to a nuclear warhead storage facility at Vologda, nearly 500 kilometers northwest of Moscow.

A Burevestnik protype exploded Aug. 8, 2019, on an off-shore platform at the Nyonoksa missile testing base, killing five scientists. (See ACT, September 2019.)

Putin, visiting a military hospital, announced Oct. 29 that “for the first time, we successfully launched [the Poseidon nuclear-armed torpedo] from a submarine by activating its booster engine, and then started the nuclear reactor, which propelled the apparatus for a certain duration.”

Putin first announced the Burevestnik and Poseidon programs in March 2018, justifying them as a response to the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2001 and concerns about U.S. missile defense systems.—XIAODON LIANG AND SHIZUKA KARAMITSU