Did Russia Actually Build Project Pluto?

Putin also spoke of a small nuclear-powered engine that could be fitted to what he said were low-flying, highly maneuverable cruise missiles, giving them a practically unlimited range.

The new engine meant Russia was able to make a new type of weapon - nuclear missiles powered by nuclear rather than conventional fuel.

“Nothing like it in the world exists,” Putin told the audience. “At some point it will probably appear (elsewhere) but by that time our guys will have devised something else.”

www.reuters.com...

I am sure there's a fair amount of bluster here, but, that said, the US military has been taking Status-6, the nuclear armed UUV, quite seriously.

Project Pluto was conceived back in the 1950s as an insane (and I really really mean insane) nuclear ramjet. Livermore, those naughty children in spirit of Ed Teller, actually built some prototypes and were briefly tested at full power for 5 minutes:

en.wikipedia.org...

However, the US military, even under the one and only LeMay, felt this was far too provocative.

Yet, it seems, the Russians are claiming them have built and successfully weaponized the engine for cruise missiles.

Wow.

Putin just gave the bird to all the arms control types. That's for sure. Geez.

Oh and I can't wait to hear how this is all the US' fault.

look up a US one alone time ago that would fligh at high mach speeds popping out warheads. the shockwave from the mach 3+ missile cased enormous damage.


they ax'ed it because it was deemed to provocative not to mention the uclear motor spewed massive contamination


and this was decades ago.

a reply to: penroc3

It was too provocative under LEMAY.

If LeMay thought it was too provocative. Holy shbt.

a reply to: anzha

Scary thought ain't it.

a reply to: Zaphod58

put one on a stealth cruise missile. launch it from kamchatka have it cruise across the ocean and hit LA 16 hours later. nobody would likely spot it until it was too late.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

At one point the US planned to have at least one, possibly several orbiting around the Pacific just waiting for the go command.

a reply to: Zaphod58

And LeMay thought Project Orion was perfectly fine.

Yet Pluto was too provocative...

o.O

a reply to: anzha

God I miss that SOB. He'd stroke out in five minutes at the Pentagon today.

a reply to: Zaphod58

The current Pentagon is the logical conclusion of McNamara's "reforms."

The LeMay was a psychopath with nukes. Scary as fsck. But the man got shbt done.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
put one on a stealth cruise missile. launch it from kamchatka have it cruise across the ocean and hit LA 16 hours later. nobody would likely spot it until it was too late.

I have been living with threats like this my whole life, and I ain't no spring chicken.

a reply to: anzha

LeMay was either the greatest thing to happen to the Air Force or the scariest SOB to walk the planet. It just depends on which side you were on.

a reply to: Zaphod58

IMNSHO, he was both.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I like to think that we kept the plans well-preserved for when E.T. pays a visit or if Wall-E decides to get a bit uppity.

Having spent a fair amount of time looking at both Orion and Pluto, some thoughts.

There is no reason to believe that the Soviets do not have the technical know how to build a nuclear powered cruise missile. The Tory reactor series proved that (heck they are still sitting int heir sheds and can only come out to play in say 10000 years. But I doubt it highly.

1) Money. The Soviets have taken a hit with sanctions and the whole oil thing. Plus being forward deployed albeit in small numbers in Syria is costly as well.

2) As we saw with Pluto, the amount of radiation that thing spewed was fierce. Yet there is no indication of any sort of testing or mass amounts of radiation detected

3) Invincible? I doubt it. Aegis systems (esp the SM-6 were designed with the almost mach 3 P-800 Oniks etc in mind so a Mach 3 nuclear cruise missile should be doable if given enough cuing. It wont be easy but its doable.

4) The Soviets already posses vast numbers of ICBM's and SLBM's that have first strike / second strike capacity and would easily overwhelm the the BMD interceptors at Greely and Vandenberg.

THe odd are that this is simply vaporware for domestic consumption. Like Putin in the Outdoors with his shirt off.

In a totally unrelated news item, I was reading about a plane design that uses a "compact fusion reactor" (I think it showed up because I search for that specific term [email protected] near daily!)

Which lead me to this mentalfloss.com article - A Brief History of Nuclear Airplanes.

Looks like Russia did fly a nuclear powered plane in the 1990s... without proper shielding!

90s to 2018? With the Wall coming down, the end of the Cold War, perestroika and glasnost, then Putin's rise to power (and nasty consolidation)... when did Mother Russia find the time to actually do this?

I find the story more like Putin posing with his shirt off, on a horse, on an elephant, than a real story. How many "Russia Mach 6 Jet" threads have come and gone here in Aircraft Projects?

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

They didn't fly it in the 90s, that's when we found out about it. They flew it in the 60s, around the same time the NB-36H flew. They used a Tu-95LAL

a reply to: Zaphod58


I stand corrected.

Yup, I read that wrong. We found out after the Wall came down in the 90s. Not that it flew in the 90s. Sorry.

a reply to: anzha

40 or 50 years ago they had one of those prototype engines abandoned out in the open at this desert location.

43°39'04.76" N 112°54'58.73" W

Maybe Putin is trying to remind of the Luna 15 mission from 1969?

a reply to: FredT

You do understand that the Soviet (Union) Union ceased to exist like three decades ago, right? It’s been known as the Russian Federation ever since, with the adjective “Russian”.

If comrade Putin isn't just bragging for the public then it could get interesting..

Firstly to use such an engine on a cruise missile sized platform then there can be no shielding, obviously no need for it on a WMD however both the speed , altitude and amount of crap this thing would throw out would give a few means of basic detection:

1. Radiation is detectable from low satellites, not really quickly but still it would indicate a launch.
2. Supersonic footprint causes magnetometers to register earthquake events, one of the ways the test platforms flying out of area 51 were detected back in the late 80's - early 90's, also works for high altitude speedsters, various detectors picked up the shuttles and SR71's when they were screaming around, I'm even told the Green Lady creates some sort of resonant signature on the detectors and she's using novel aerodynamics.

That being said, even after any type of detection, stopping the damn things is going to be fiercely difficult, trying to do a direct intercept is incredibly tricky and it may be necessary to do a skymine approach and simply detonate debris seeded ordnance (conventional or small nuclear) in it's path to destroy the vehicle. Any cruise missile sized object at M3+ is not going to be doing any hard turns or climbs as the airframe will not be strong enough.

I know of one theoretical system from the 80's that was planned to use that method but to my knowledge never made it past some very very early component testing in Australia.

I'm sure in the dark depths of the black world there is some desire to give Mr Putin a rebuttal in the form of a few shapes under tarpaulins with the headline "You may have videos, we built your nightmare" kind of stuff.