SpaceWar.com reports: “Russia’s latest strategic weapons announcement has reignited debate over one of the most controversial missile programs of the modern era – the 9M730 Burevestnik, known to NATO as the SSC-X-9 ‘Skyfall.’

Moscow claims its experimental, nuclear-powered cruise missile has achieved a long-duration flight – a feat reminiscent of Cold War-era propulsion experiments that once bordered on science fiction.

On October 21 2025, President Vladimir Putin was reportedly briefed that a Burevestnik missile had completed a 15-hour flight spanning roughly 14 000 kilometers, allegedly powered by a compact onboard nuclear reactor. The announcement coincided with large-scale strategic nuclear exercises and was presented by Russian state media as proof that the weapon has reached an advanced stage of development…

The Burevestnik concept draws directly from Project Pluto, a U.S. program of the 1950s that built and ground-tested miniature nuclear ramjet reactors – the Tory-IIA and Tory-IIC – intended for a Supersonic Low-Altitude Missile (SLAM). Washington abandoned that project in 1964 due to the hazards of radioactive exhaust and the rapid improvement of intercontinental ballistic missiles…”